Getting your patent granted can take anywhere between 5 to 7 years in India. In the recently released National IPR Policy, the Government aims to reduce the time taken to get a patent to just 18 months.
As a furtherance of this objective, in the Patent (Amendment) Rules, 2016, the Government introduced the provision for expediting patent examination in India.
What is an expedited patent examination in India?
A request for regular or expedited examination can be filed at the time of patent application filing or within 48 months from the filing date. However, filing requests during application filing would eventually reduce the grant process timeline.
Ordinarily (not mandatorily), within one month from the date of a request for examination, the Controller is required to refer the application to an examiner. Further, the examiner is then necessary to prepare the Examination Report within one month, but not exceeding three months from the date of reference for such examination by the Controller. On the other hand, upon a request for an expedited examination, the examiner will be required to give the Examination Report within one month, not exceeding two months from the date of reference for examination by the Controller. Therefore, patents for expedited examination will be put in a queue separate from the applications for ordinary examination. This will ensure that expedited examinations are completed in less time than normal examinations.
Who can apply for expedited patent examination in India?
Two kinds of Applicants can apply for expedited patent examination:
1. Startups or
2. Applicants (filing national phase Applications) who have included India, in their PCT application, as an:
-International Searching Authority (ISA), or
-International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA)
These are the only two categories of Applicants who can benefit from the expedited examination. Therefore, selecting India as ISA can be beneficial to expedite the grant process.
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Procedure for filing of expediting patent examination
According to Rule 24C (3) of the Patent (Amendment) Rules, 2016, a request for expedited examination must be accompanied by request for publication unless the application has already been published or the request for publication has already been filed. Therefore, to file a request for expedited examination, the application must be published, or a request for publication must have been filed, or it can be filed along with the expedited examination request.
Also, a request for expedited examination can be filed at the beginning of a later stage. Thus, an ordinary examination request can be converted into an expedited examination request by paying the stipulated fee.
What is the fee for expedited examination?
| Sl. No. | Entity | Statutory Fee (INR) |
| 1 | Natural person/ Startup/Small Entity | 8000 |
| 2 | Large entity | 6000 |
Fee for conversion from ordinary examination to expedited examination:
| Sl. No. | Entity | Statutory Fee (INR) |
| 1 | Natural person/ Startup/Small Entity | 4000 |
| 2 | Large entity | 40000 |
Further, in a Notification dated 14.06.2016, the Government has limited the number of requests to 1000 per year for expedited examination to be received by the Patent office.
The Government’s move to introduce expedited examination for patents is laudable. But, the fact is that the time for the Controller to refer a Patent for examination to the examiner is not fixed. However, the expedited examination of patents will be placed in a separate queue, which will serve the purpose of hastening the patent registration process.
