Rethink plan to abolish Mental Property Appellate Board: Trade teams

A gaggle of trade associations on intellectual property has requested the federal government to rethink a proposal to abolish the Intellectual Property Appellate Board, saying such a transfer could be prejudicial to India’s credibility as an IP jurisdiction and decrease IP requirements in India.

The board was arrange in 2003 to listen to appeals in opposition to choices of the registrar underneath the Trade Marks Act, 1999, and the Geographical Indications of Items (Registration and Safety) Act, 1999.

The associations have written to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, regulation and justice minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and commerce and trade minister Piyush Goyal, asking them to rethink the inclusion of IPAB within the Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Circumstances of Service) Invoice, 2021, which seeks to scrap varied tribunals.

“Had there been any consultations with the stakeholders—IP house owners, the trade, IP practitioners—this invoice wouldn’t have included inside it the abolition of IPAB,” the 4 associations mentioned.

Citing the IPAB’s “marvellous file” of reversing unreasonable choices by the Patents Workplace, they mentioned the board was not a drain on the nationwide exchequer and no cost-benefit evaluation was offered to again the rationale of “appreciable expense”. The expenditure on sustaining IPAB from 2018 to 2020 was solely Rs 13.65 crore, they mentioned.