Some Concerns about the Amendment Process to Key Patent Levers: A “Captured” Patent Office?

In light of the recent Patent (Amendment) Rules, 2024, we are pleased to bring this post by Prashant Reddy T., which was written in the context of the October ’23 draft amendments. Prashant raises questions as to the influence of business lobbying groups, and concerns regarding the then proposed changes to the Rules. Please note: in the finally published Rules (last week), the proposed change to pre-grant oppositions has been modified in the finally published version. Earlier, the controller could decide on ‘maintainability’ of whether the pre-grant could even be heard. The new changes do allow all pre-grant opponents to request a hearing, even if it is found to not be prima facie valid. To that specific extent, readers should note that Prashant’s critique is no longer applicable to the new Rules. Nonetheless, the context and remaining issues raised do remain questions worth pondering over. For readers interested, Swaraj and Praharsh have also just put out a 2 part post on the finally published version of these same Rules (see here and here ).



[Please note that the op-ed was first published in The India Forum. ]