- India ranked 36/50
- Last year India was ranked 44/50
- Index prepared by U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC).
The report cites the following factors as responsible for India’s performance:
- India has taken several noteworthy steps to improve its IP system in 2018 and also performed well on the new indicators included in the Index this year.
- The Government of India take steps to improve its national IP environment and these efforts continued in 2018 and progress has been made on several important areas measured by the Index.
- Greater efforts were made to align and incorporate India’s IP environment with the international IP system.
- India’s accession to the WIPO Internet Treaties and subsequent agreement with the Japanese Patent Office on a pilot PPH both stand out.
- India also invested considerable energy into decreasing pendency rates for patent and trademark applications by hiring staff and investments in resources for modernising and improving the administrative capacities of the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM).
- As a result, the application backlog had been reduced from over 200,000 pending applications in March 2017 to just over 155,000 applications by end of June 2018.
Challenges:
- The weakness of India as highlighted in the report are barriers to licensing and technology transfer, including strict registration norms, limited framework for the protection of biopharmaceutical IP rights, patentability rules outside international standards, lengthy pre-grant opposition proceedings and previously used compulsory licensing for commercial and non-emergency situations as key hurdles.