The Hindu Businessline / August 13, 1998
The Government has decided to accede to the Paris Convention for the protection of industrial property and its facilitation treaty, the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT). This is expected to provide a tremendous boost to scientific research, and inventive and innovative activity in the country.
According to an official release from the Ministry of Industry, India would also be able to play a more significant role in determining matters related to industrial property in international fora, and forcefully articulate its concern on such issues.
According to the Ministry, the main advantages to be derived are an improved industrial climate, improved information flow, as well as better and more extensive protection for Indian inventors abroad. It would also give the benefit of national treatment to Indian inventors, support to India's export efforts, encouragement to scientific research and technological development and membership of the PCT and other treaties.
The Ministry pointed out that no additional expenditure would be incurred as fee of membership of the Paris Convention and the PCT. What is more, India would also not have to make any changes in the Patents Act, 1970, in order to accede to the convention. The only change required in the laws on Industrial Property is a minor amendment in Section 78(a) of the Designs Act of 1911, to extend reciprocal property arrangement to all the countries party to the Paris Convention. At present, this is restricted to the Commonwealth countries.
The most important benefit for India from membership of the convention is access to the PCT. The PCT is a special agreement under the Paris Convention for international cooperation in the field of patents. It deals with rationalization and cooperation with regard to filing, searching and examination of patent applications and dissemination of information contained in them. The principal objective of the PCT is to simplify and render more effective and economical the means of applying for patents in several countries. Before the introduction of the PCT, the only way in which protection could be sought in several countries was by filing a separate application in each country. The PCT provides for filing a single application in one language having effect in each of the countries party to the PCT as designated by the applicant, formal examination of the application, 'international search,' which gives a report on the previously published applications in this field of invention, centralized publication and options for an 'international preliminary examination' before the applicant decides to seek protection in a specific country.
The Ministry observed that this agreement would benefit patent offices which are struggling with heavy workloads. Under the PCT system, by the time an international application reaches the Indian office, it would have been searched by the international office, thereby providing the office with the necessary search report, on the basis of which it could carry out its examination. The ultimate examination and grant of patent would, however, be left entirely to the Indian patent office, which will examine the application within the framework of domestic law.
The Paris Convention is a multilateral treaty dealing with the protection of industrial property in the widest sense. It is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization, one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations dealing with the protection and promotion of intellectual property rights. Currently, 147 countries are members of the Paris Convention.
