Digital Access Service open to patent applicants in India

Once an application is filed in India under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), certified copies of documents claiming priority and translated and verified copies of priority documents that are not in Hindi or English have to be submitted to the Indian Patent Office (IPO): (i) before the expiry of 31 months from the date of priority; or (ii) within three months from the date of filing in India. If this is not done, the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks has the right to disregard the priority of the application.

The IPO added a new feather to its cap when it announced on 12 March that under a cooperation agreement with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) India was participating in the WIPO Digital Access Service (DAS) for submitting and exchanging priority documents, with effect from 31 January 2018.

Submitting physical copies of certified priority documents and verified translations at multiple patent offices involved substantial cost and usage of paper, as applicants used to request certified paper copies of documents from one office and then submit those documents to other offices. This problem was addressed by the Assemblies of the Paris Union for the Protection of Industrial Property, the Patent Law Treaty and the International Patent Cooperation Union, at meetings held in Geneva in 2006, where the establishment of a digital access service for priority documents was approved.

Jyoti Sharma is an associate at LexOrbis.