Recently, WIPO published its 2024 IP Indicator, capturing the trends in the global IP filing and their administration. The 2024 Indicator focuses on the developments from 2023 and compares it with the figures from 2022. As the name suggests, the report features facts and figures about different types of IPRs, but this post is limited to the numbers on Patents, specifically focusing on data about the Indian patent regime. 

India Specific Figures

More Applications and More Grants  

The biggest highlight of the report with regard to India is the sky high number of grants by the Indian Patent Office. The report notes that the Indian patent office granted patents to approximately 80% of applications processed in 2023 and the rate of grant in 2023 was 149.4% (!!!) more than the rate of grant in 2022. Readers would recall that we have previously discussed and questioned the humongous number of grants in 2023 (see here). The total number of grants in 2023 were 76,053 and the number of grants to non-resident applicants (59,122) outnumbered the patents to resident applicants (16,931). With these many grants in 2023, the total number of patents in force in India is recorded at 188,785, which is 60,122 more than last year.

Will we finally see more patent grants to Indian Residents? It seems likely  as in 2023 marks the first time when Indian residents submitted more than half of all the patent applications (55.2%)! The report notes that the Indian Patent Office received a total of 90,298 applications in 2023 (49,860 by residents and 40,438 by non-residents), which is 13,230 applications more than the ones received in 2022.

How did the Indian Patent Office Fare?

Applications Received and Patent Granted

With the increasing number of applications and even unprecedentedly higher number of grants, let’s take a look at how the Indian Patent Office was able to perform in 2023.

The report states that the patent office processed 93,401 applications and granted a patent against 76,053 applications. 9,895 applications were rejected and 7,453 applications were withdrawn or abandoned. The pendency time (time from the first office action to last office action) was 49.5 months i.e. more than 4 years! The report also states that in India first office action is taken 10.6 months after receiving the application. The average age of patent reported a dip from 12.9 years in 2018 to 10.3 years in 2023. Although this can be attributed to the disproportionate increase in the number of applications every year to that of Officers in the Patent Office, over the years (more on this below). 

Hints of an Overburdened Patent Office? 

To put it in some perspective, as reported here, a 2016 office order had set a target of 30 disposals/ month by every Controller has been set by the Indian Patent Office. Which means at least 360 disposals/ year by them. In 2023, the Patent Office had formed a Committee to review this 2016 arrangement. 

To know more about this Committee I also filed an RTI application seeking information on the report that the Committee was supposed to submit on November 30, 2023. Surprisingly, I was informed by the Chief Public Information Officer that the Committee was dissolved and treated as defunct, and that the previous system set via Office Order 34 of 2016 is still existing. I hope to follow this in a separate post.) 

“Controller” includes “Senior Joint Controller”, “Joint Controller”, “Deputy Controller”, and “Assistant Controller” and by a quick look at a random sample of orders passed by the Patent Office, we can see that all these Controllers dispose of applications. As reported in the 2022-23 Annual Report the Patent Office had 241 Controllers in March, 2023. But in May 2023, (pdf) this was increased to 557. With a quota of 360 disposals per year, the total number of Controllers should be able to dispose of 172080 applications (21690 ((241×360) till March ‘23) + 150390 (557×270) till December ’23) = 172080). If this quota was fulfilled then surely the patent office would have minimized the reported 267,543 pending applications (which according to the 2024 indicators increased by 7.3% than last year). However, in the past we have seen how these quotas are extremely burdensome for the officers of the Patent Office to fulfill (see here, and here)  and thus with increased workload, it’s important to increase the workforce.

Number of Examiners

On the workforce, the Report states that India had 221 patent examiners as against 8,180 in the United States, 3,987 in the EU, 1,663 in Japan, and 988 Germany. The staff crunch in the Patent Office has been extensively discussed on the blog (here, here, and here) and to solve it, the Office did conduct a nationwide exam to recruit 550 examiners and we’ll see a bump in the number of examiners in the Indian Patent Office. However it is important to note that the recruitment process was marred by numerous controversies concerning irregularities and a writ petition was also filed before the Delhi High Court questioning the legality of the whole process (see here). Eventually on August 30, 2024 the Court rejected (pdf) the writ petition for want of jurisdiction and granted the concerned respondents liberty to approach the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). (Sidenote: In case any reader has knowledge if a petition has been filed before the CAT, please let us know in the comments below.)

Quality over Quantity

Importantly, the point is not only to resolve the above pendency but also to make sure that quality grant or rejection orders are passed by the Patent Office. The quality of the Indian Patent Office’s orders passed during this year received flak from different High Courts on numerous occasions (as discussed here, here and here). In a recorded instance, we have seen the Patent Office unjustifiably reverse its earlier stance granting patent to a previously rejected application, without substantive reasons. Therefore, at the cost of reiteration, it must be realised that while aggrieved applicants usually would file an appeal against the impugned rejection order, there is no automatic or easy way to assess the quality of patent grants. 

In addition to the India specific commentary above, interested readers can take a look interesting global figured below, others can move past to the last para directly :- 

IP Trends Across the Globe

Overall increase in the number of Patent Applications filed: Globally 3.55 million patent applications were filed, witnessing a 2.7% increase over the numbers from 2022.

“Main Driver(s) of Growth”: Discussing this upward trend, the Report notes that residents in China saw an increase of 57,830 applications in 2023, followed by the Republic of Korea (with 15,628 additional applications in 2023), the United States of America (US) (with 12,682 additional applications), Japan (with 9,040 additional applications) and India (with 8,734 additional applications in 2023). Interestingly, the Report labels these countries as “main driver(s) of growth in 2023” somewhat overlooking the fact that mere patent applications might not be the best yardstick to measure “growth” in the economy- A nuance that Swaraj raised in his assessment of WIPO’s 2023 IP Indicators. 

Resident Filings > Non Resident Filings:  Resident filings grew to 2.53 million applications, (i.e. by 4.9%), while non-resident filings declined to 1.02 million filings (i.e. by 2.2%).

Fresh Applications: China’s patent office received 1.68 million patent applications in 2023, followed by the US (598,085 applications), Japan (300,133 applications), Republic of Korea (243,310), and the European Union(199,429). Together, these top five offices accounted for 85% of the total applications received in 2023 and offices located in Asia received 68.7% of global patent applications (2.44 million).

Number of Grants: around 2 million patents were granted worldwide(10.1% more than the number of patents granted in 2022. This incidentally marked the fastest growth rate since 2012. The biggest contributors to this growth rate were China, the EPO and India. China granted 122,450 additional patents in 2023 in comparison to its 2022 numbers, the EPO granted 23,523 additional patents and India granted 45,563 additional patents. Overall, China granted 920,797 patents, which is almost three times the number of patents granted by the US i.e. 315,245, followed by Japan (209,368), the Republic of Korea (134,734) and the EPO (104,609).

Patent Applications Rejected: Interestingly, the US granted patents for less than half of all applications processed in 2023. The rate of rejection in the US was 47% followed by China 33.3%.

Patents in Force: Approximately 18.6 million patents were in force across 140 jurisdictions in 2023. Interestingly, almost 5 million of them are in force in China. This is followed by 3.5 million patents in force in the US, 2.1 million patents in Japan, and 1.3 million patents in the Republic of Korea.

Pending Patent Applications: Around 4.6 million patent applications were pending in 2023 (excluding the ones pending in China).The US has around 1.2 million pending patent applications, followed by Japan (794,036 pending applications), the EU (670,386 pending applications), Germany (370,311 pending applications) and the Republic of Korea (366,478 pending applications). Interestingly, Russia was able to reduce its pending applications by 13.8%.

Average Age of Patents: Of the total 20 years for which a patent is granted over an invention, the average age of patents in force in 2023 ranged from 11.5 years in Brazil to 6 years in Norway.

Coming back to the discussion on India, in order to set up a healthy patent regime which would greatly benefit the nation, the focus should be on properly examining the applications, passing clear speaking orders, and to ensure that our patent officers are not overworked. Though the big numbers may look great for optics and portray a country as a robust set up to attract more IP intensive investments, it’s only half the battle won.