DHC: TRADEMARK & PATENT AGENTS HAVE A HUGE RESPONSIBILITY, A REGULATORY BODY IS THE NEED OF THE HOUR

Justice Pratibha M. Singh while adjudicating the matter of Saurav Chaudhary v. the Union of India & Anr. (WP(C) – IPD 9/2023) observed that trademark and patent agents have a huge responsibility to adhere to deadlines as prescribed in the Act and Rules to file their pleadings and attend to their matters diligently.

The Hon’ble Court further stated that a supervisory or regulatory authority over these agents appears to be the need of the hour owing to repeated cases wherein litigants have raised allegations against such agents and apart from reprimand from courts, there are no consequences that visit them. 

The present issue arose when the petitioner engaged one M/s Delhi Intellectual Property LLP to assist him with patent registration. Following the filing of the application and request of examination, the First Examination Report was issued on 29th April 2022 the response to which must be filed within 6 months. However, despite several follow-ups by the Petitioner, the patent agent did not respond. Consequently, the application was abandoned due to non-filing of response. The Petitioner then engaged a new agent and filed a request for restoring the patent application in January 2023. 

In a previous hearing of this case, the Court had issued notice to M/s Delhi Intellectual Property LLP following which, Mr. Naveen Chaklan, a patent agent in the aforementioned firm appeared before the Court and undertook that he would file his affidavit explaining his position leading up to the abandonment of the petitioner’s patent application.

The Court also instructed Ms. Nidhi Ramdan, Ld. Central Government Standing Counsel to obtain instructions from the Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks as to the manner in which trademark agents and patent agents ought to be regulated and file said report on the next date.

In the last five years, the amount of patent and trademark filings have increased consistently as can be observed below:

Patent filings:

Trade Mark filings: 

This matter is now listed for hearing on 9th November 2023.

Read order here.

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