THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DASHBOARD AT THE INDIA PATENT OFFICE

Recently, the India Patent Office (IPO) updated its website to provide users with information about the filing status of different types of intellectual property, such as Patents, Trademarks, Copyright, and Designs. It is a commendable effort for the IPO to provide stakeholders and other interested parties with real-time data related to IP filing and other statistics. Previously, such information was available in the IPO's annual IP report. 

The transition from static published data to real-time data related to filing, grants, and pendency of different types of intellectual property registration status enables its stakeholders to see the progress and performance of the India Patent Office, resulting in greater transparency in the IPO's operations.

The IP dashboard is available at the Indian Patent Office's official website (Home | Intellectual Property India | Government of India). On the opening page, you will find tabs labelled Patents, Designs, Trade Marks, Copyright, and GI. 

The first tab you encounter is Patents. A text area designated as “Patent Dashboard” provides real-time information about Patents, showing Graphs related to online and offline filings, yearly trends, and state-wise distribution of patent filings.  A text box on the left side provides a Dropbox, allowing you to select the year for the drop-down menu. Immediately below are three buttons labelled as Home, Filing, and Grants. 

The Home button provides an overview of the recent statistics about filings and grants in India in various combinations. The Filing button, when initiated, provides details related to patent filing by state, nationality, and subject. Additionally, the visual area displays information related to patent filing by examination group (electrical, mechanical, chemical, biotechnology) and filing by applicant type (individual, small entity, large entity, educational institutions). The Grant button provides information related to Granted patents by state, nationality, subject, examination group and applicant type.  

The pie charts provided for the distribution share of each segment. For example, the pie chart for filing based on examination group classifies the pie chart into four categories (electrical, mechanical, chemistry and biotechnology). When you click one of the four categories, it provides data related to the selected category. If you click on biotechnology, the bar chart will show bars-related applications filed by each state in India for biotechnology. Similarly, the bar chart will show the nationality of biotechnology inventors. You can test each of the categories by clicking on it and observing the statistics related to it. 

The second tab is Designs. The Home button provides information labelled “Design Dashboard,” which illustrates online and offline design filings, yearly trends, and state-wise design distribution. Apart from the Home button, the left corner textbox includes two other buttons, “Filings” and “Registration”. The Filing button provides filed by state, filed by nationality, filed by class and filed by application type. The registration button provides information like that provided by Filing Statistics.  Each section in the pie chart can be clicked to drill down into the more detailed information. 

The third tab, “Trade Marks”, provides information and statistics about Trademarks. The “Trade Marks Dashboard” home screen provides information related to branch mode and online mode filing of trademarks, yearly trends and state-wise distribution of filed applications for trademarks. The buttons for Filing and Registration are like Patents and Designs. You can perform drill-down statistics on part of the pie chart provided at the bottom. 

The fourth tab is Copyright. Again, on the home button, you can see the data of the various filings and registrations, giving a brief overview of the state-wise distribution. If you want to go into more detail, then the filings and registrations buttons can help you out, just like the other tabs. In the filings button for this dashboard, you’ll encounter only two different graphs: one is for state-wise distribution, and the other is for types of work, for example, Literary, Artistic, Computer Software, etc. The same is true for the registered button.

The last tab “Geographical Indications (GI)” provides GI Dashboard, where the homepage treats you to a beautiful map and a graph. For more details about the filings and registrations, the respective buttons help you with the statistics. The data is sorted according to states and goods for both categories. Some of the goods mentioned here are handicrafts and artisan products, handicrafts, textiles and fabrics, food and beverages etc. One can view the registration button in a similar manner.

For all 5 different dashboards, you can also sort through the searches according to the date of filing. 

Overall, this initiative by the Government of India to create an IP Dashboard for public viewing will be positive for European companies looking to enter the Indian market, especially with a new product, design, etc., and want to file it here. It shows real-time data, which can be very informative and encouraging for companies looking to come to India.