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5. Pre-grant Opposition: No time limit has been Notification is typically
The Controller notifies the prescribed for the provided immediately.
applicant of any oppositions completion of this step.
received in relation to the To allow for objections,
application a minimum of 6 months

is provided subsequent
to publication before a
patent is granted.
After details of the pre-grant opposition have been notified, the applicant is required to submit a
reply statement accompanied by appropriate evidence within three months from the date of notice.
After submission of the reply the Patent Office needs to take the following steps.
6. Opposition Hearing: The 1 month from the Typically, this takes around 3-4
Controller after hearing completion of proceedings months.
the parties (if requested)
considers the evidence and
takes a decision as to the
validity of the opposition

7. Grant: The patent is granted No time limit prescribed 4-6 months from the
and published once (i) all FER for the completion of completion of all proceedings.
responses are accepted and this step Where there is no hearing,
(ii) no pre-grant oppositions grants are typically issued
are pending within 12 months from the

date of submission of responses
to the FER
Source: Survey Estimates

9.63 Box 4 and Figure 11 show that the time taken for the first step, i.e. publishing the application
by the controller is currently 18 months in India, as compared to 15.4, 14.4, 11.1, 10.2 months
respectively in US, China, Korea and Japan. In order to reduce the time taken in the application
process of patents, prescribed time limits for the first stelp may be reduced to 14-15 months
bringing it in line with US and China.
9.64 Secondly, delay in India’s patent application is also due to the low number of patent
examiners in India. The number of patent examiners in India in 2020 were 615 as opposed to
13,704 in China, 8,132 in United States and 1,666 in Japan (Figure 12). This leads to huge delay
in receiving First Examination Report (FER) delaying the whole process. This was also noted
by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce’s Review of Intellectual Property
Rights Regime in India (2021). Hence, there is an urgent need to increase the number of patent
examiners.