New Draft Manual of Patent Practice and Procedurepatent Office, India (2008)

Patents in the USA

Recently the Indian Patent Office published new draft manual relating to the Patent Practice to be followed by the Indian Patent office. This manual shall outline the practice followed by the Indian Patent office during the examination of all patent application filed in India whether the Indian application or application claiming conventional priority or filed under the PCT.

Beside retaining its old interpretation of obviousness (non-inventiveness) the Indian Patent office has tried to incorporate the interpretation used in all major Patent office around the world especially the European Patent office.

Further, as regards to independent claims, a restriction is imposed according to which the independent claims must show dependency to main claim. Therefore, now in case of independent claims the Applicant shall have to file a divisional application to protect the whole scope of the invention.

Now only one omnibus claim can be claimed per application. As only one independent claim shall be allowed naturally one omnibus claim shall be allowed per application.

Further, in respect of patent applications relating to inventions in the field of electronics etc. those claims together forming single inventive concept shall be allowed in one application only e.g. transmitter and receiver. This is a positive step as few Examiners used to consider other set of claims as independent claims and the Applicant has to file divisional applications to protect other set of claims.

In case of chemical and pharmaceutical compounds, process, compound and one application form of compound can be claimed in a single application.

In software related inventions now method claims shall be allowed. Earlier the Patent office used to object of method claims and used to allow only the device claims that too with hardware components.

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About the Author:

Author is an Advocate and Patent and Trademark Attorney with Aswal Associates, Attorneys at law & Intellectual property, New Delhi, India and can be reached at sudhir@aswal.com.

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