It’s 2025, and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry released another set of draft rules in order to amend the Patent Rules 2003. The notification mentions that the draft rules will be taken into consideration after the expiry of a period of thirty days from the date of their public availability through the gazette (the e-gazette website shows the issue date as 17 July 2025 and the publish date as 18 July 2025, while the notification itself is headlined with 16th July as well). In brief, the draft rules are intended to modify the Patent (Second) Amendment Rules 2024 (“2nd Rules”) through which a new Chapter XIVA dealing with penalties and appeals had been added. The 2nd rules detailed out the process to be followed by the adjudicating officers and the appellate authority in exercising their powers to prosecute offenses falling under Section 120 (Unauthorised claim of patent rights), 122 (Refusal or failure to supply information to the Controller or the Central Government), and 123 of the Patent Act (Practice by non-registered patent agents) of the Patents Act. Interested readers will recall that the Jan Vishwas Act 2023 introduced sweeping changes to multiple Indian legislations, including the IP laws. One major feature was the introduction of a new adjudicatory mechanism involving adjudicating officers and the appellate authority (Sections 124A and 124B of the Patents Act are the relevant provisions).
The new draft rules, barring a few changes which I will discuss below, are almost identical to the 2nd Rules. A cursory look reveals that the draft primarily intends to rectify certain typos and structuring issues that had remained in the 2nd Rules. For instance, Rule 107D (Appeal) was succeeded directly by rules 107H, 107I, and 107L. The draft rules have corrected the alphabetical sequencing of the rules. Rule 107A, however, has been wrongly changed to Section 107A in the draft rules, a minor error I believe will be corrected in the final version. The second alteration in terms of structure is that of the Second Schedule to the 2003 Rules. The Patent (Amendment) Rules 2024 (please note that these are different from the 2nd rules) had introduced a Form 31 to be used for availing of a grace period in relation to section 31 of the Act (Anticipation by public display, etc.). Now the 2nd Rules added two more forms to the 2003 rules (for filing of complaint to the adjudicating officer and the appeal against its orders to the appellate authority). These two however were numbered forms 31 and 32. The doubling of Form no. 31 has been rectified by the draft rules by renumbering these forms as Form 32 and 33 respectively.
Now I wish to briefly mention the other changes in the draft rules.
Missing From Action–Other Offences in Chapter XX of the Act and Qualifications of the Adjudicating Officer and the Appellate Authority:
Chapter XX of the Patents Act also has Sections 118 (Contravention of Secrecy provisions relating to certain inventions), 119 ( Falsification of entries in register, etc.), and 124 (Offences by companies). The current draft Rules, similar to the 2nd Rules, fail to provide the mechanism for the filing of and adjudicating complaints in relation to the offences under these provisions. The draft rules also fail to provide any concrete details on the qualification requirements for the designation of the adjudicating officer and the appellate authority. Praharsh and Pranav have voiced their thoughts on these same drawbacks of the draft version of 2nd rules here.
Power of the Adjudicating Officer to Proceed in the Absence of the Person Required to Appear:
The draft Rule 107C(7) empowers the adjudicating officer, after recording of proper reasons, to continue with the inquiry if any person who was required to appear before the officer failed/neglected/ refused to do so. What is important here is the scope of this ‘person’, which the sub-rule refers to as the person ‘required by this rule’. Rule 107C contemplates two broad types of persons here: the one against whom the allegations of contravention are made [Referred to in sub-rule (3)], and other persons who are acquainted with the facts and circumstances of the case and can provide relevant evidence/documentation [Referred to in sub-rule (6)]. The previous iteration of Rule 107C(7) in the 2nd Rules only referred to the person required by sub-rule (3), and not the second type of person as well. The new draft rules therefore empower the adjudicating officer to dispense with the attendance of any person familiar with the factual matrix and in position to provide evidence after the recording of reasons. What would then happen if sufficient evidence is not available at all? It is to address this question that it is still desirable that the officer has sufficient evidence at their disposal through other avenues to reach a finding or non-finding of contravention.
Allowing the Extension of Time With or Without the Imposition of Costs:
Rule 107F in the draft rules provides discretionary authority to the adjudicating officer and the appellate authority to extend the timelines (to the extent as may be deemed fit) specified in Chapter XIVA if reasonable cause for delays and failure to act is shown. Now there are two alterations in the draft rules version as opposed to the same rule’s 2024 variant. First, the new variant permits the officer/ authority to impose costs along with the time extension. If the concerned person has demonstrated reasonable grounds for delay, it will be strange if the officer/authority still decides to proceed with an imposition of costs. Second, there is a small change of language from “as he may thinks fit” to “as may be deemed fit”. One likely rationale for this is to make the language gender neutral.
Uploading Of the Order Under Rule 107G:
Draft Rule 107G(1) states that the orders passed under the Chapter shall be digitally signed, communicated to all parties, and uploaded on the official website. The previous iteration of the rule (in 2024 rules) employed the language ‘the official website of the adjudicating officer or the appellate authority as the case may be.
These were the aspects of the draft rules that I found worth discussing. Please let me know in the comments if the readers have any other thoughts, etc. Interested readers are also encouraged to send their objections/suggestions in relation to the draft rules either by addressing them to the Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi- 110001 or by e-mail at ipr-patents[at]gov[dot]in. If we take 18th July as the date of publication, then 30 days from then would put the deadline for comments at August 17th.