India: New System of Scheduling a hearing at the Patent Office

June 2, 2018

Source: www.ipindia.nic.in

In order to reduce the inconvenience caused to the Attorneys due to frequent visits to an appropriate office of the Indian Patent Office to attend Hearings, the Office of Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (hereinafter referred to as the ‘CGPDTM’) issued a notice dated April 24, 2018 modifying the current system of scheduling of hearings.

In the current system of scheduling a hearing, the hearings are fixed based on the filing date of the application without consideration of the Attorney/Applicant involved in the matter. This has led to multiple visits of the Attorneys to the Patent Office. Requests were made to the Office of CGPDTM to modify the current system so such frequent visits may be avoided.

Considering these concerns of the Attorneys/ Applicant, the Office of CGPDTM issued a notice that the current system of scheduling a hearing would be modified with effect from June 2018. By this modified system, if an Attorney/Applicant has more than one hearing listed/scheduled in a particular month on different dates, the same would be clubbed together so that the hearings can be attended on a same date. If in case, matters relating to an Attorney/Applicant is more than the daily limit, then the same shall be fixed on the very next working day.

This new system of hearing would be of huge help to Attorney/Applicant and would lead to a better hearing due to time and energy saved.

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