Indian Economy Quiz: Intellectual Property Rights: Patents, Trademarks and Copyright

Under the Patents Act of 1970 as amended, a patent in India runs for twenty years from the date of filing of the application, a term fixed in line with the minimum standard laid down by the TRIPS agreement of the World Trade Organization, and renewal fees must be paid…

It replaced the Indian Patents and Designs Act of 1911 on the recommendations of the Ayyangar Committee, allowed only process patents in medicines and food at first, and was amended in 1999, 2002 and 2005 to meet the obligations India accepted at the World Trade Organization.

Under the Copyright Act of 1957, copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work lasts for the life of the author and sixty years counted from the beginning of the year following the year of death, after which the work enters the public domain.

Darjeeling tea, grown on the hill slopes of the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, was the first product registered under the Geographical Indications of Goods Registration and Protection Act of 1999 after the Act came into force, and the Tea Board of India holds the registration.

The World Intellectual Property Organization was set up by a convention signed in 1967, became a specialised agency of the United Nations in 1974, and has its headquarters at Geneva in Switzerland, where it administers the Paris and Berne Conventions, the Patent Cooperation Treaty and the Madrid system.

The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights is one of the agreements that came into force with the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995, and it binds every member to minimum standards of protection, enforceable through the dispute settlement system of the organisation.

Under the Trade Marks Act of 1999 a registration lasts ten years from the date of application and may be renewed for further periods of ten years without any limit on the number of renewals, so a brand name can in practice be protected for as long as the business…

It provides that the mere discovery of a new form of a known substance which does not result in the enhancement of the known efficacy of that substance is not an invention, and therefore cannot be patented; the Supreme Court applied it in the Novartis case concerning a cancer drug.

The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, with its headquarters at Mumbai, works under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade in that ministry, and the Copyright Office was also brought under the same Department.

World Intellectual Property Day is observed every year on 26 April, the day on which the convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization came into force in 1970, and each year the organisation announces a theme on creativity and innovation.

The National Intellectual Property Rights Policy approved in 2016 carries this slogan and brings patents, copyright, trademarks, designs, geographical indications, plant varieties and layout designs under a single framework, with awareness, administration, commercialisation and enforcement as its objectives; its implementation was entrusted to a cell under the Department for Promotion…