NEW DELHI - India and China might be the competing economic giants globally, but when it comes to innovation, the land of dragon is way ahead, filing nearly seven times more patent applications compared to our country.

According to global research and analytics firm Evalueserve, India filed 35,000 patent applications during the fiscal year 2007-08, whereas China had more than 2.45 lakh applications in 2007.

About 35,000 patent applications were filed at the Indian Patent Office (I.P.O.) during the 2007-08 fiscal year, which is an increase of 21 percent compared to the previous year.  Once granted, these patents have a validity of 20 years from their filing date.

However, the State Intellectual Property Office of China (S.I.P.O.) received a total of 245,161 20-year patent applications in 2007.

“This made China the third most prolific patent-filing country in the world after the United States and Japan. Patent filing has been growing both in India and China at about 20 percent per year.

However, the S.I.P.O. received approximately the same number of 20-year applications in 1997 as the I.P.O. did in 2007-08.
This implies that India is approximately 10 years behind China,” Evalueserve said.

In 2007, filings by domestic applicants in China accounted for 62.4 percent of the 20-year patent applications with the S.I.P.O.
During the same period, the year-on-year increase in domestic 20-year patent application filing in China was at 25 percent, whereas that of foreign filings stood at 4.5 percent.

On the other hand, only 24,505 patent applications were filed at the I.P.O. in 2005–06. Among them, domestic applicants filed about 20 percent (4,855 applications) while foreign applicants filed 80 percent (19,650 applications).

Evalueserve report noted that even though the number of patent applications filed by foreigners in India rose dramatically, the same by domestic entities witnessed a relatively slower growth.

“... the number of patent applications filed by foreigners in India rose dramatically and witnessed an annual growth of 77 percent in 2005-06, the corresponding growth in domestic application filing (applications first filed with the I.P.O. and then elsewhere) was only 20 percent during the same period.”

The report pointed out that low patenting activity in domestic companies would hurt their global competitiveness in the long run. This could be mainly due to lack of awareness among local firms, time taken for granting a patent by the I.P.O. and the high fee.

In view of these factors, “... India should allow a second category of patents, known as utility model patents, which have a validity of 10 years from their filing date and which can be granted within 6 to 12 months since they are not examined substantively,” the report said.

Germany, Japan, France, South Korea, Australia and China are some of the countries whose patent offices grant such 10-year patents.              (PTI)