The Indian Patent Office has issued the guideline for the startups to file patent, trademark and design application under Start-Ups Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP). The SIPP scheme mainly focuses on awareness creation, innovation and creativity encouragement. Some of the guidelines mentioned below:

The startups can directly contact the facilitators of IPO for preparing the patent application and filing the same. If the startups unable to select facilitator means, then the head of patent office will provide the three facilitators name from the list.

The facilitator will not charge anything from the startups or entrepreneurs. The fee for filing patent application and other statutory fees shall only be carried by the Startups themselves.

The facilitator shall perform functions including Preparing reply to any query from patent office, attending the hearings as fixed by the Patent Office with relation to the Patent Application and finding relevant documents in the patent office on time pursuant to hearing or otherwise as per Patent Act like Form 3, etc.

For trademark and design application shall also be filed and processed in the same manner as that of patent applications.

The Author is a Patent Consultant from MR Technollect Solutions (www.MRTechnollect.com).