‘India has scaled up its patent processing capacity’

Bengaluru: Last fiscal (FY25), India granted 33,504 patents with 1.1 lakh filed for by applicants. This follows the government granting over 1 lakh patents in FY24, its highest ever.

In fact, the number of patents granted even surpassed the number filed by applicants during that year (92,168), with the government working to clear up the backlog, explained Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India on Monday. This was part of an effort to increase state capacity in the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) ecosystem.

In FY24, the US granted 3.15 lakh patents (out of 5.98 filed), while China granted 9.21 (out of 16.78 filed). Of China’s, this would amount to about 3 lakh good quality patents, Sanyal elaborated. The reason for this is manpower, as per Sanyal.

The Indian government is increasing capacity in terms of the number of examiners. A major roadblock until recently was inadequate manpower in the patent office, Sanyal pointed out, delivering a lecture on process reforms in governance. Over the years, some manpower was added but it was still a fraction of what it was in the US (8,125) and China (13,704), as per 2023 data.

By the end of FY25, manpower in India’s patent office increased to 1,383, with further approval of hiring an additional 525 people over the next three years already in place.

“In the next few years, we will have a capacity to process 2-2.5 lakh applications. However, the number of applications are still at around 1 lakh. We now need to push R&D in our country, especially in the private sector to be able to fully utilise the expanded IPR system,” he said.