The proposed Patent Office fee hike – Is it required?

As Rajiv had blogged last month, the DIPP is proposing an across the board fee hike for filing and prosecuting patents at the Patent Office. For a quick recap, the notification by the DIPP proposes an increase of up to 100% in several categories, with a lower fee for those preferring to take the e-filing route. For an office which is supposed to be dealing with cutting-edge technology, the patent office has been dreadfully slow to embrace the joys of technology – other administrative offices like the Registrar of Companies have been much quicker to embrace e-filings etc. But getting back to the point of the post, I wanted to discuss a few issues with this latest fee hike?

(i) What does the DIPP do with surplus funds?

I always find it intriguing that the DIPP mentions its intent to hike the fees but without providing any ideas about what it is planning to do with the extra resources that are generated through the fee hike. More importantly, what prompted the fee hike? In order to lend some perspective to the topic, I’ve dug out some statistics from the Annual Reports of the Patent Office for the last five years and it is all available in the little graph below:

As you can see all the figures are pointed north. Although the Annual Reports do not disclose the revenue surplus generated by the Patent Office, it does disclose the overall revenue surplus generated by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) which has risen from Rs. 148.06 crores in 2006-07 to Rs. 213.22 crores in 2010-2011. Given that the Patent Office is the largest revenue earner for the IPO, accounting for at least 79% of all revenues, it is logical to presume that a large percentage of the revenue surplus is earned from the Patent Office.

Given that the DIPP already has a revenue surplus of Rs. 213.22 crores, what exactly is the logic in hiking the fee once again? What has the DIPP been doing with the increase in fees over the last 5 years? Of course, the Patent Office has hired over 253 patent examiners over the last 2-3 years but apart from those recruitments and the digitization, I don’t think we have seen too many other visible changes in the services provided by the Patent Office? Or have we?

It would be nice to see either the DIPP or the Patent Office, publish a roadmap for proposed reforms that are sought to be achieved with the surplus revenue, along with targets. 

(ii) The cost of certified copies

Three years ago, we had blogged about a case filed by Polymedicure before the Delhi High Court, suing the Patent Office, for a lot of things, one of which was the cost of procuring a certified copy of an entire file-wrapper of a patent under litigation. At the time the Patent Office had given Polymedicure a bill of Rs. 104,000 for the entire file-wrapper because each document was priced at Rs. 4000 per document. By Indian standards this is an outrageously high sum for supplying certified copies. Under the RTI Act, the government is supposed to supply certified copies for a mere Rs. 2 per page. Other departments of the Government like the Ministry of Company Affairs charge something like Rs. 25 per page.

The other big difference between the MCA and the IPO however is that, the MCA allows you to apply directly through its website for a certified copy. Apart from the obvious convenience, it saves the user the possible attorney fees. Most law firms usually peg their fees to the official fees being charged by the patent office. Therefore if the certified copies cost Rs. 4000 per document, the attorney fees could cost anything between Rs. 4000 to Rs. 8000 per document. By allowing users to apply for certified copies directly through the website, the government can cut out the middle man and save money for everybody.

More importantly however, the patent office needs to have some sense of proportion while setting the fee structure. Rs. 4000 per certified copy seems just too expensive.