Duties
Patent examiners review patent applications to determine whether the claimed invention should be granted a patent. The work of a patent examiner usually includes searching patents and scientific literature databases for prior art, and examining patent applications substantively by examining whether the claimed invention meets the patentability requirements such as novelty, "inventive step" or "non-obviousness", "industrial application" (or "utility") and sufficiency of disclosure.
In most countries, Examiners are high level employees with clerical staff working under their supervision in supporting roles. For example, in the Indian Patent Office, an entry level Examiner (official designation: Examiner of Patents & Designs) is a Group A (Class 1) gazetted officer. This is the highest post in the set-up of the Indian Government service.
On April 13, 2007, a "Coalition of Patent Examiner Representatives" expressed concern that
in many patent offices, the pressures on examiners to produce and methods of allocating work have reduced the capacity of examiners to provide the quality of examination the peoples of the world deserve the combined pressures of higher productivity demands, increasingly complex patent applications and an ever-expanding body of relevant patent and non-patent literature have reached such a level that, unless serious measures are taken, meaningful protection of intellectual property throughout the world may, itself, become history.According to Indian newspaper Mint, Indian patent examiners have the world's highest workload and lowest pay. While a patent examiner in the European Patent Office would handle less than seven patent applications per month and a USPTO examiner would handle eight applications per month, an Indian examiner reportedly handles at least 20 applications a month. However an Indian examiner’s monthly salary is less than a third of his/her counterparts in other foreign patent offices.
Read more about this topic: Patent Examiner
Famous quotes containing the word duties:
“Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.”
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“The duty of the State toward the citizen is the duty of the servant to its master.... One of the duties of the State is that of caring for those of its citizens who find themselves the victims of such adverse circumstances as makes them unable to obtain even the necessities for mere existence without the aid of others.... To these unfortunate citizens aid must be extended by governmentnot as a matter of charity but as a matter of social duty.”
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