India needs 5 years to catch up with China in patent filings

New Delhi: Last year, India filed patents only one-seventh in number of that done by China. And now the country stands at a level that was achieved by its neighbor as long as 10 years ago, says a study by global analytics firm Evalueserve, which says the gap will remain for up to further five years, reported Mint.

In order to encourage patent filing by small domestic companies, the report also recommended that India introduce a new class of 10-year patents that will attract lesser scrutiny, a suggestion spurned by public health advocates who don't want the bar to be lowered.

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In 2007-08, Indian patent offices received more than 35,000 applications across sectors - up 21 percent from the preceding year and a more than three-fold increase during the last six years. In China, the number of patent applications last year reached 245,161.

"Indian companies lag substantially in patent-filing intensity compared with their Chinese counterparts," Evaluserve said. "Filing of invention patent applications in India was at about the same level as in China in 1997," it added.

"China's manufacturing sector is largely responsible for the country's lead over India in patent filings", said Ram Deshpande, senior manager for intellectual property in Evalueserve's Shanghai office.

In India, it was the chemicals and pharmaceuticals sector that constituted the biggest bulk of patent filings. Patenting activity in the information technology sector was 115 times lower.

China is also faster in granting patents. China's timeline of 22.5 months for a 20-year-patent grant compares with 3-5 years in India, thanks to the absence of pre-grant or post-grant opposition in China, which merely allows patent invalidation proceedings. And China has more than 2,000 patent examiners, compared with 240 in India.

But according to Amit Sengupta, a health affairs activist and secretary of the Public Health Movement, "The numbers are important to a certain extent but beyond that they don�t say a lot. They don't tell you the quality of patents filed, the way local patent laws are defined or the number of patents actually granted."