The Union Law Ministry and an Additional Solicitor General (ASG) of India have said that lakhs of patents and trademark orders passed in the last two years by the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) are “legally unenforceable,” because they were made by “outsourced employees,” in violation of the Trade Marks Act.
The issue has risen from the patent body’s decision to hire hundreds of employees who were outsourced through the Quality Council of India (QCI), which is an autonomous body and does not belong to the Government of India, reported The Indian Express.
In the past one year, these employees have granted patents and trade marks to companies by issuing quasi judicial orders.
“The decisions taken by “outsourced employees appointed through any agency (and not by the Central Government) in any statutory proceeding can very well be challenged as null and void as these orders are passed by legally incompetent persons”, the Department of Legal Affairs had said in a legal opinion on April 25, reported The Indian Express.
The legal opinion was sought by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) earlier that month.
In her opinion on June 17, ASG Aishwarya Bhati had suggested “annulment of decisions” made by the “unauthorised outsourced employees”.
Earlier, the CGPDTM had “outsourced” 790 employees through QCI at an annual cost of Rs 50.26 crore from October 10, 2022.
The CGPDTM had claimed that these hirings were done after a report by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) which said that lack of manpower was causing in delays in approving patents and trademarks.
According to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, between March 2023 and March 2024, the CGPDTM had granted as many as 1 lakh patents.
Much of the patents approved belong to global IT majors such as Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Electronic, Huawei Technologies and Apple as the patents approved for non-resident Indians and entities stood at 74.46 per cent in 2022, as per World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), reported The Indian Express.
