NEW DELHI - As part of India’s drive to fully modernize its patent/intellectual property rights (IPRs) infrastructure, Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, inaugurated the state-of-the-art Intellectual Property Office building at Salt Lake in Kolkata on October 29, 2005.
Nath said that this was the second inauguration in a series of four virtually-interlinked buildings in India’s metro cities. Nath inaugurated the first integrated IPR building two months ago in New Delhi, a press release by the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry stated.
The increasing importance of intellectual property is being evidenced from the increased filings in the Indian IP offices. Patent applications filing has gone up four-fold in the last five years. In the last two years alone, about 200,000 trademark certificates have been issued, and another 100,000 certificates are going to be issued in the current year.
Nath pointed out that the facilities provided were state-of-the-art and comparable with the best in the world.
"Our IP offices are working to ensure delivery of IP services in a transparent, efficient and user friendly manner,” he stressed.