The office of Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM) on July 2, has notified the 2025 Patent and Trademarks Agent Exams. The Trademark Agent Exam is likely to be held on January 04, 2025 and the Patent Agent Exam is likely to be held on January 5, 2025. Both the exams will be organized in 13 locations (one less than the number of locations for 2024 exams.) This time the exams will be organized in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur and Thiruvananthapuram.
As stated in the notification, the exams will be organized by the CGPDTM and both exams will be conducted in 2 sessions of 2 hours (objective type) and 3 hours (descriptive type) respectively.
The accompanying guidelines to the notice give other relevant information about the registration process, issuance of admit cards, nature of the written examinations, and importantly the syllabi for the exams, which seem to have changed a bit. The syllabus for the Trademarks Agent Exam is- Trade Marks Act, 1999 & Trademarks Rules, 2017(as amended) & matters related to IP Jurisprudence. For the Patent Agent Exam, the syllabus is the Patents Act, 1970, the Patents Rules, 2003, the Designs Act, 2000 and the Designs Rules, 2001 & Matters related to IP Jurisprudence. In the previous edition, instead of “IP jurisprudence”, “IP administration” used to be a part of the relevant syllabus. The guidelines are not clear on what exactly falls under “IP jurisprudence” and how it will differ from “IP administration”. Also, consequent to the amendment in Rule 110 via the Patent Rules 2024, in addition to Patent Act and Rules, this time the exam for Patent Agent will also have questions from Designs Act and Rules.
The eligibility of the candidates for the Trademarks Agent Exam is given under Rule 144 of the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 and the eligibility of the candidates for the Patent Agent Exams is given under Section 126 of the Patents Act, 1970. The qualifying marks for the Trademarks Agent Exam are stated to be the same as the qualifying marks for the Patent Agent exam as given in Rule 110 of the Patent Rules.
The mode of application for the exams is online and the registration will be open from July 08 (12 noon) to August 08 (05.30 PM).
The notice is linked here and the guidelines for the exams are here.
For any query related to the Trademarks Agent Exam, an email can be sent to trademarkagtexam.tmr@gov.in., and for a query related to the Patent Agent Exam, an email can be sent to patentagentexam.ipo@nic.in.