New Draft Manual of Patent Practice and Procedurepatent Office, India (2008)

Recently the Indian Patent Office published newapplication. As only one independent claim shall be
draft manual relating to the Patent Practice to beallowed naturally one omnibus claim shall be
followed by the Indian Patent office. This manualallowed per application.
shall outline the practice followed by the IndianFurther, in respect of patent applications relating
Patent office during the examination of all patentto inventions in the field of electronics etc. those
application filed in India whether the Indianclaims together forming single inventive concept
application or application claiming conventionalshall be allowed in one application only e.g.
priority or filed under the PCT.transmitter and receiver. This is a positive step as
Beside retaining its old interpretation offew Examiners used to consider other set of
obviousness (non-inventiveness) the Indian Patentclaims as independent claims and the Applicant has
office has tried to incorporate the interpretationto file divisional applications to protect other set of
used in all major Patent office around the worldclaims.
especially the European Patent office.In case of chemical and pharmaceutical
Further, as regards to independent claims, acompounds, process, compound and one
restriction is imposed according to which theapplication form of compound can be claimed in a
independent claims must show dependency tosingle application.
main claim. Therefore, now in case of independentIn software related inventions now method claims
claims the Applicant shall have to file a divisionalshall be allowed. Earlier the Patent office used to
application to protect the whole scope of theobject of method claims and used to allow only
invention.the device claims that too with hardware
Now only one omnibus claim can be claimed percomponents.