http://frontierindia.net/handling-intellectual-property-rights-issues-by-indian-entities#comment-71513Handling Intellectual Property Rights Issues by Indian Entities

April 15, 2014 by Dr Arun Kashyap  Indian entities accord lowest priority to intellectual property related issues. They employ technocrats and other professionals who have no prior qualification/ experience to handle such issues. 

Business without intellectual property (IP) strategy is a bad risk management by Indian entities. IP rights have therefore acquired tremendous value to an entity for the monopoly they provide to the owners for the disclosure they make to the state for a limited duration. Further, these rights are concerned with various kind of IP such as patents, trade marks, copyrights, designs, geographical indicators, etc. For the purpose of simplicity and illustration in this article, we shall focus on patents

 India has produced so far nearly 2500 patent agents. It has been estimated that nearly 60-70% of these professionals have been employed with IP firms that were set up by either senior patent attorneys or lawyers. Quite a good number of patent agents have also been employed by non-Indian entities, knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) firms and pharmaceutical companies. This has led to a negligible availability of patent agents for other Indian entities that are not aware of the existence of this class of professionals and therefore employ the services of technocrats, librarians and HR professions who essentially coordinate with IP firms for patent/ trademark related jobs. Indian entities do not know that they could even avail the services of these professionals to handle their patent related issues either in-house or at IP/ lawyers firms. 

A patent attorney is an attorney who has the specialized qualifications necessary for representing clients in obtaining patents and acting in all matters and procedures relating to patent law and practice, such as filing an opposition.

 In India, a person registered to practice before Indian patent office is called a “Registered Patent Agent” or simply “Patent agent”. The Indian Patent Law specifically does not mention the designation of “Patent Attorney”. The Indian patent agent can thus be considered the counterpart of the patent attorney in Australia, EPO or Japan.