“Out of the frying pan, into the fire” seems to sum up the current predicament of the Office of the Controller General of Patent, Designs and Trade Mark (CGPDTM). Only a few weeks after somehow organizing the Patent and Design Examiners’ Exams, and fixing the long-standing issue with the trademark registry website, the office has ended up in another turmoil. As reported by the Print, the Press Trust of India, and tweeted by the ANI, Member of Parliament and Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Adhir Ranjan Choudhary has shared a letter with the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC), Praveen Kumar Srivastava bringing to light some scathing allegations of corruption against the CGPDTM. Unfortunately, the attachments to this letter, including the complaint which apparently details the exact allegations and the cited sources for them, don’t seem to be available. Without these documents, the allegations should of course be taken with a pinch of salt. Nonetheless, the letter gives us enough of a sneak peek into the allegations made in the complaint. These allegations include wrongful allocation of cases to ‘compromised officials’ and reversing the transfer orders of officials for monetary gains, misappropriation of funds, arbitrary engagement of the Quality Council of India (QCI) to recruit officials, and arbitrary processing of applications which may have a disruptive effect on the Indian IP ecosystem.

Recruiting Contractual Officials Via QCI 

Of the above broadly stated issues, the letter extensively emphasized on the lack of statutory authorization to recruit contractual employees via QCI. Once appointed, these employees perform statutory functions like holding hearings and examining applications in Trademark and GI Registries. Regardless of the allegations leveled, this arrangement does seem to be a major problem because under Section(s) 3 (2) of the Trademarks Act and the GI Act, the Central Government is mandated/ empowered to appoint different officials to these Registries and not bodies like the QCI. As explained here and here, QCI is an autonomous body set up with the support of the Government and industry associations and thus, cannot possibly be construed as “Central Government” under these Acts. 

This whole situation poses another set of pressing questions. First, it is unclear how can contractual hearing officers be appointed when Group A and Group B officers, (appointed by the Trademark and GI Registry Rules) are the one who conduct hearings and examine applications. Second, while previously these appointments were made by the CGPDTM i.e. the concerned authority, it is unclear why the responsibility to recruit these officials was handed over to QCI in 2023.

Do These Contractual Appointments Help Ease the Workload? 

Apart from the lack of statutory authorization to make such appointments, the letter to the CVC highlights that these appointments have not been of much help in actually reducing the pendency. It states that despite the appointment of more than 400 officials and spending 4.5-5 crores monthly on their salaries, the number of pending cases has increased from 46615 in April, 2023 to 50420 in February 2024.  This raises significant questions, both on the capacity of the office, as well as whether processes and records are regularly scrutinized.  

However, not knowing the source of the information, leaves us with several questions. First, it is not clear what the letter means by “pending cases”. Does it mean pending applications for registration, or pending applications for renewal, or pending oppositions, or pending applications for examination, or just overall instances of all the pendencies? This lack of specificity raises apprehension if the complainant has made a factual error in estimating the figures or has cherry-picked different data to compile these figures.

Second, the letter states figures allegedly from 2023 and 2024. However, it is unclear from where they accessed this information. Looking at the official sources, the latest information available from IP India annual report is for the financial year 2022-2023. Another issue is that the information in the IP India Annual Reports is limited only to the subject year or last few years and does not tell the absolute figures like total number of pending trademark applications etc.  

One source that remotely corroborates the trend of increasing pendency at the Trademark Registry is the WIPO IP Indicators. The Indicators for 2021 (page 110) state that a total 449219 applications were pending in India in 2020. This figure increased to 550524 in 2022, as per the 2023 indicators (page 97). These numbers of course do not match with the numbers in the letter (and the WIPO indicators also state that often data may vary with actual numbers) but they do indicate an upward trend of pendency within the Trademark Registry. 

The larger issue that nonetheless remains here is the absence of a public source to easily access the updated granular information on application trends, without which these instances are the only way through which we can know about questions of performance of the IP Registries and Offices. Therefore, regardless of the fate of this complaint, to ensure transparency it is suggested that the office adopts a mechanism to ensure access to the latest (and perhaps real-time) facts and figures about different applications received, and orders passed by them. 

QCI and Recruitment of Patent Examiners 

Readers may recall that this is not the first instance where the CGPDTM and QCI alliance has been questioned. In July last year, we highlighted the oddity of granting QCI a substantial say in the recruitment process of Patent and Design Examiners. This issue was discussed again, at greater lengths when the QCI organized prelim exams were scrapped due to “technical reasons” ‘ (it’s unclear what these reasons were) and the National Testing Agency (NTA) was handed over the responsibility to appoint our Patent and Designs Examiners. It is worth mentioning that the exams organized by NTA too were not free of their share of “technical glitches”, causing the exams to be rescheduled for a handful of aggrieved participants. What’s more, this rescheduling was notified one day after conducting the rescheduled exam. (H/t to an anon reader for pointing this out in the comments of our post here.)

As discussed by Swaraj and me, in our previous post here, the only thing that is consistent with the patent Examiner recruitment process in India is inconsistency. As highlighted in that post, initially UPSC used to undertake these recruitments. Eventually, this responsibility shifted to Educational Consultants India Ltd., then the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), then the National Productivity Council, and now the NTA. The Recruitment Rules for Patent Office’s Officers also does not provide any assistance in this case as it simply states that the Examiners should be “directly recruited”. But who shall recruit them? The Rules are unfortunately silent on that. Thus, this seems like the high time when clarity over the designated authority should be incorporated within the law to ensure that these instances just remain things of the past and do not repeat in future recruitments. 

Corruption and CGPDTM 

The Chairperson’s letter to the CVC apprehends that these allegations may just be the tip of the iceberg and demands a thorough probe into each of the practices. Long-term readers will recall that this is not the first-time allegations of corruption have been lodged against the CGPDTM and its officials. Over the course of many years, we have seen and discussed possible trysts between officials and patent agents, CBI raids, arrests, severe file mismanagements, and glaring procedural omissions among a plethora of other issues with the CGPDTM.

What lies ahead? Looking at the comprehensive guidelines of the Central Vigilance Commission, this letter can very well serve as a formal complaint and hopefully will lead the authority to undertake a thorough investigation into the allegations. As seen from the above discussion, the nature of these allegations is quite serious, and therefore, a swift and transparent inquiry into them is a must to preserve public confidence in the Indian IP system and the institution.  

Thanks to Swaraj for his inputs on the post and H/t to an anonymous reader for first sharing the development with us.

• SEO Powered Content & PR Distribution. Get Amplified Today.
• PlatoData.Network Vertical Generative Ai. Empower Yourself. Access Here.
• PlatoAiStream. Web3 Intelligence. Knowledge Amplified. Access Here.
• PlatoESG. Carbon, CleanTech, Energy, Environment, Solar, Waste Management. Access Here.
• PlatoHealth. Biotech and Clinical Trials Intelligence. Access Here.
• Source: https://spicyip.com/2024/03/pac-chairperson-demands-probe-by-chief-vigilance-commission-into-corruption-allegations-against-cgpdtm.html