{"id":39194,"date":"2017-04-15T11:31:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T06:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/one\/?p=39194"},"modified":"2025-06-13T10:49:01","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T05:19:01","slug":"patent-opposition-system-india-pre-grant-post-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/patent-opposition-system-india-pre-grant-post-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"Patent opposition system in India: Pre-grant &#038; Post grant oppositions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-38151 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/bananaip.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Intellepedia-IP-News-Logo-300x107.png\" alt=\"This image reads Intellepedia which is BananaIP's News Center\" width=\"300\" height=\"107\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Intellepedia-IP-News-Logo-300x107.png 300w, https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Intellepedia-IP-News-Logo.png 366w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Patent laws of various countries\u00a0provide\u00a0a provision for opposition proceedings. Opposition proceeding is an administrative process available under the patent and trademark law of many jurisdictions which allows third parties to formally challenge\u00a0the validity of\u00a0a pending patent application and a granted patent. \u00a0Similarly, the Indian patent law also provides an opportunity to the public to\u00a0take part\u00a0in a patent proceeding\u00a0to\u00a0challenge the patent applications and the granted patents by raising objections by filing\u00a0an opposition with\u00a0the Indian\u00a0patent office. The Indian patent law provides two kinds of patent oppositions proceedings. The opposition proceedings before\u00a0the grant of\u00a0a patent are usually\u00a0called\u00a0pre-grant and those after the grant are usually\u00a0called\u00a0post grant opposition. In this blog we deal with the concept of pre-grant opposition system in India.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Pre-Grant Opposition: <\/strong>Section 25(1) of the Indian patent (Amendment) Act 2005 provides a provision for filing a pre-grant opposition against a patent application. Under this provision any person, any third party or the Government may challenge\u00a0the application of\u00a0grant of patent and\u00a0inform\u00a0to the controller of Patents of the\u00a0opposition, in writing against\u00a0the grant of\u00a0a patent after the application for a patent\u00a0has been published\u00a0and\/but before the grant of the patent.\u00a0Pre-grant opposition acts as a defensive shield to confirm\u00a0the validity of\u00a0the patent applications before patents\u00a0are granted\u00a0to them. The pre-grant opposition procedure acts as a safety net to capture questionable patent applications before a patent\u00a0is granted to them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Pre-grant opposition\u00a0can be\u00a0made on the grounds listed under section 25(1) (a) to (k) of the Patent Amendment Act, 2005:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Wrongfully obtaining the invention<\/li>\n<li>anticipation by\u00a0prior\u00a0publication<\/li>\n<li>anticipation by\u00a0prior\u00a0date, Prior claiming in India<\/li>\n<li>Prior public knowledge or public use in India<\/li>\n<li>Obviousness and lack of inventive step<\/li>\n<li>non patentable\u00a0subject matter<\/li>\n<li>insufficiency of description of the invention<\/li>\n<li>non-disclosure of information as per the\u00a0requirement\u00a0or providing materially false information by an applicant<\/li>\n<li>Patent application not filed within 12 months of filing the first application in a convention country<\/li>\n<li>nondisclosure\/ wrong mention of source of biological material<\/li>\n<li>Invention anticipated with regard to traditional knowledge of any community, anywhere in the world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Proceedings Under Pre-Grant Opposition<\/strong>: Any person can file a pre-grant opposition by way of a representation to the Controller against\u00a0the grant of\u00a0patent based on any of the grounds mentioned above. The representation\u00a0is required\u00a0to include a statement, a\u00a0request\u00a0for hearing and evidence (if any) in support of the representation. The controller considers the representation only after a\u00a0request\u00a0for examination for that patent application\u00a0has been filed. After considering the representation, the controller notifies\u00a0the applicant with\u00a0a copy of the representation. The applicant is required to reply to\u00a0the notification with\u00a0his statement and evidence (if any) in support of his application within three months from the date of the notice. The Controller then based on the statement and evidence filed by the applicant either refuses\u00a0the grant of\u00a0the patent or asks the applicant for amendment of the complete specification to his satisfaction. Finally, after considering the representation and response by the applicant the controller proceeds further by either rejecting the representation and granting\u00a0the patent with\u00a0amendments to the complete specification or accepting the representation and refusing the grant of the patent within one month from\u00a0the completion of\u00a0above proceedings.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In India, the opposition proceedings take place before the controller general of patents. The major advantage of initiating opposition proceedings with the India patent office is that the whole process is strictly time bound, therefore interested parties do not have to go through lengthy and tedious\u00a0procedures, which may also involve\u00a0considerable\u00a0time till the matter\u00a0is decided. The cost incurred in opposition is also minimal compared to litigation costs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Authored by Madhu K, Patents division at BananaIP Counsels<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Indian patent opposition system offers structured processes for pre-grant and post grant challenges to patent validity. This post outlines the procedures, grounds, and key advantages of opposition proceedings under Indian patent law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":34,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[163,5,158,7447,70,7768,1452,1453],"class_list":["post-39194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property","category-patents","tag-indian-patent-law","tag-intellectual-property","tag-patent-litigation","tag-patent-office-india","tag-patent-opposition","tag-patent-procedure","tag-post-grant-opposition","tag-pre-grant-opposition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135736,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39194\/revisions\/135736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}