Informist, Friday, Jul 5, 2024

NEW DELHI – The Delhi High Court has directed the Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trademarks to frame a draft code of conduct to regulate patent and trademark agents and publish it on its website within two months for stakeholder consultation. The code of conduct will be notified latest by Dec 31, the court said.

Within this period, a framework should also be put in place to deal with complaints against trademark and patent agents, the court said. In the meantime, if any complaint is filed against any agent with the patent office, it should be decided by an ad hoc committee, it said.

Justice Prathiba M. Singh said the ad hoc committee should have at least two officials from the trademark or patent office and one senior intellectual property practitioner with at least 15 years of practice and also registered as a patent or trademark agent. The ad hoc committee should be notified within two months, she said.

The high court was hearing a petition by a person named Saurav Chaudhary challenging the abandonment of his patent application titled "Blind-Stitch Sewing Machine and Method of Blind Stitching". Chaudhary urged the court to restore his application.

Chaudhary had filed the application through a firm, Delhi Intellectual Property LLP, in August 2019. The patent office issued the first examination report of the application in April 2022, with a direction to file a response within six months. Chaudhary said that despite repeated follow-ups with the firm, he did not receive any reply from the patent agent.

Chaudhary later learnt that the application was "deemed to be abandoned" due to non-filing of the response to the first examination report. He then engaged a new agent and filed a request to restore the patent application in January 2023. In its order, the high court set aside the abandonment order and directed that the status be reflected on the patent office's website within two weeks.

The court also ordered an enquiry against Chaudhary's previous patent agent, who was lacking in diligence and did not respond to emails sent by the petitioner. "Accordingly, the office of the CGPDTM (Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trademarks) is directed to hold an enquiry against the Patent Agent and take action in accordance with law," the judge said.

Further, the high court noted that considering the duties and functions of patent agents, any carelessness, professional negligence, or misconduct, unless accidental or inadvertent, needs to be dealt with strictly. It also noted that currently there are no rules of conduct for these agents.

The court also looked at the recent trend of misleading promotions by companies and other entities, including intellectual property professionals, and noted the statement of members of the Intellectual Property Attorneys' Association about the mushrooming of websites to apply for and prosecute trademarks, many of which are making misleading representations. "The controller general ought to be able to curb such misleading and misrepresentative advertising in the larger interests of the profession and the applicants," the court said. End

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Rajeev Pai

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