In a welcome development, the office of Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) launched the Open House Helpdesk Portal on February 14, to “provide swift and effective resolution to the queries and grievances of applicants and stakeholders” on a plethora of issues. Registering oneself with the portal seems pretty straightforward where a person has to put in their name, email id, and mobile phone number. In addition to the above, one would also need to choose a password and after signing up the portal can be accessed using the above credentials upon the receipt of a verification mail.
Upon logging in, a complainant would need to raise a ticket in the portal and after the CGPDTM would share their response, the complainant can raise a subsequent support ticket or close a ticket in case the query has been resolved. If no response is made within 7 days from the date of the response, the ticket will be resolved automatically.
The type of query that can be raised seems to depend on the type of IP it is concerned with. That means some of the queries that are mentioned for a specific type of IP(let’s say patents) are not available for other types. This seems logical in some cases as queries related to TM forms may not apply to any other IP. However, the classification can surely use some fine-tuning for some administrative queries. For instance, for some IPRs (like trade marks) there is an option to file an RTI-related query, but the same option is not available for patents. In these cases, I think one can file such a query under the “Others” heading but then this “Others” option is not available for some of the IPRs, like trade marks. See the chart here (pdf) for different types of queries that can be raised for different IPRs for a better understanding.
Though the decision to implement this portal should be lauded, hopefully, this will not lead to the end of the daily Open House Sessions where any stakeholder can directly interact with the officers on their issues. In fact, operating both the Open House Helpdesk Portal and Open House Sessions makes sense as a complainant can inquire from the officers in the latter in those cases where tickets are not resolved swiftly.
Do you think that this move will help in addressing the issues with different IP offices? Please share your thoughts on this below in the comments!
The portal can be accessed here: https://iprsearch.ipindia.gov.in/openhousehelpdesk/Login/Login
H/t to an anon reader for bringing this to our attention.
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- Source: https://spicyip.com/2024/02/spicyip-tidbit-cgpdtm-launches-open-house-helpdesk-portal.html
