India's new patent law will come into effect on March 15, 2024

India issued the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2024 and the Patents (Second Amendment) Rules, 2024 on March 15, 2024 and they have officially come into effect.

The major changes in the Patent Amendment Rules 2024 include:

• Deadline for request for substantive examination: The deadline for filing a request for substantive examination (RFE) for a patent application has been shortened from 48 months to 31 months from the earliest priority date.
• Simplified Form 3: Patent applicants now only need to submit the details of the corresponding application twice on Form 3, once when the second filing of the Examination Report (FER) or within 2 months from the date of issuance of the document by the Patent Office.
• The “Certificate of Inventorship” was introduced to recognize the inventor’s contribution to a patented invention.
• If the applicant pays at least 4 years of annual fees in advance electronically, the annual fees can be reduced by 10%.
• Patent implementation declarations have been reduced from once a fiscal year to once every three fiscal years.
• Grant: The examiner may grant an extension of up to six months.
• The time for objection requests and objection responses in pre-grant and post-grant objection procedures has been adjusted.