New survey reveals India's patenting deficit

Intellectual Asset Management Magazine
12 June 2008
Joff Wild, IAM Magazine

Hot on the heels of its report on patenting in China, research company Evalueserve has turned its attention to India. The result is a fascinating insight into what is happening in the world’s largest democracy. It also shows that, unlike their Chinese equivalents, Indian companies have yet to get to grips with their country’s patent system – something that may not bode well for the ongoing development of the Indian economy.
The report shows that, while there has been a significant increase in filings at the Indian Patent Office, only 20 of the top 200 applicants between 2005 and 2007 were Indian companies. The top 10 local patent filers (with their position within the top 200 in brackets) are:
1. Council of Scientific Industrial Research (CSIR) – 1,523 published applications (1)
2. Ranbaxy Laboratories – 320 published applications (37)
3. Dr Reddy’s Laboratories – 315 published applications (38)
4. Indian Institutes of Technology – 237 published applications (47)
5. Bharat Heavy Electricals – 189 published applications (59)
6. Orchid Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals – 149 published applications (67)
7. Cadila Healthcare – 148 published applications (69)
8. Cipla – 138 published applications (70)
9. Steel Authority of India – 136 published applications (71)
10. Larsen & Toubro – 123 published applications (72)

But many in the top 10 have filed very few applications outside India. For example, between them, the 10 have filed 576 applications at the USPTO, but 356 of these were from the CSIR alone. At the EPO, the total was 552 applications, of which 434 came from CSIR and Ranbaxy. On the PCT front, there were 1,066 applications, almost al of them made by CSIR and the pharmaceutical companies. By contrast, the top 10 Chinese companies between January 2005 and December 2007 had a combined 20,051 published SIPO applications. That said, foreign filings were also comparably very low.
Towards the end, the report makes a couple of very telling observations:
• In 2007, there were 245,161 invention patent applications filed at the SIPO, of which domestic applicants filed more than 62.4%. In contrast, a total of 24,505 applications were filed at the IPO in 2005–06, of which domestic applicants filed 4,855 (approximately 20%) and foreign applicants filed 19,650 (approximately 80%) applications.
• Further, during this period, the year-on-year increase in domestic invention patent application filing in China was 25%, whereas that of foreign filings was only 4.5%. This is a clear indication of increasing awareness of patent application filing among domestic Chinese companies. In contrast … while the number of applications filed by foreign applicants in India has risen steeply (with an annual growth of 77%), the growth in patent application filing by domestic applicants is substantially less (approximately 20%). This low growth may be ascribed to the lack of awareness among domestic Indian companies with respect to patents and the value strong patent portfolios would provide to them.

It seems to me that if India is to fulfil her undoubted potential and truly become a 21st century powerhouse, Indian companies need to start learning a lot more about patents starting today.

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