What Role Does Patent Agents And Patent Attorneys Play In India

There are two separate terms, patent agent and patent attorney, but most of the times, the words are used in place of each other due to confusion. Which means if someone is saying patent agent in India, he or she might be talking about attorney too and vice-versa. There is a significant difference between these two right from education qualification to work responsibility. If you also have confusion, the below post is for you, so that when you say patent attorney in India it means attorney for you and not an agent. 

Patent agent

A patent agent is a person who has the skills to help you in filing a patent application. As a citizen of India, your patent can only be drafted by a legal person. So, a patent agent is the one who has the technical knowledge and legal permissions. The required qualification to work as a patent agent is mentioned in section 126 of patents act. 

➥The person must be an Indian citizen with a minimum age of 21 years. 

➥A degree in the technical or science field is required from a law established university. 

➥Must have passed the Indian patent agent exam.

One thing that you can learn here is that a degree in law is not necessary to be a patent agent, plus a law degree holder cannot turn into a patent agent because a degree in science is essential.

What role does a patent agent perform?

After obtaining a degree in technical field and qualifying the patent exam, a person becomes legally eligible to do the job. According to section 127 of Indian patents act, 1970 a patent agent has to perform the below-mentioned jobs.

The patent agents work under the supervision of the controller.

Completes work that needs to be done before the project passes to the controller such as preparing documents and dealing with business transactions. 

Patent attorney

Looking at the Indian system, there is no such term as a patent attorney. It is sometimes substituted in place of a patent agent in most of the cases. Attorney means advocate and expanding the definition, we see that a patent attorney is a person who holds a legal degree and has been accepted and enrolled by state bar council. The council makes the person eligible to deal with the patent process. So, the difference here is that a patent attorney needs to have a degree in the law field and not necessarily in the science or technical field. 

What role does a patent attorney perform?

A patent attorney is the other name of patent advocates, and an advocate is the one who is associated with legal works. A patent attorney takes the legal proceedings of the patent registration further. The patent attorneys have the rights to represent your case in court which means of an issue arises during the process or someone questions about the application, patents attorney can help but patent agent can not.

Difference between a patent attorney and patent agent

The major difference between the two terms is in qualification and job role. The patent agents need to have a science or technical degree and need to pass the patent exam while a patent attorney needs to have a law degree and must be enrolled in state bar council. The difference in their work profiles is that a patents agent files the application and executes the process because he/she knows the subject area. A patent attorney works for patent litigation and represents the case in court. Both are thus different in every aspect.