The whole route from idea to granted patent — what is patentable, what each stage costs in official fees, how long it takes, and where applications actually fail. Updated for the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2024.
Patent filing in India begins with a document, not a form. A patent is a time-limited monopoly granted by the State in exchange for a full public disclosure of how the invention works. In India it lasts 20 years from the filing date (not from grant), and it gives the right to stop others making, using, selling or importing the invention — a right to exclude, not a right to practise.
The bargain matters. You are trading secrecy for protection, so anything you do not describe well enough for a skilled person to reproduce, you do not get. A specification that hides the working detail tends to produce a patent that is either refused or unenforceable.
Provisional — an early filing that secures a priority date while the invention is still developing. The complete specification must follow within 12 months.
Complete (ordinary) — the full specification with claims, filed directly.
Convention — claiming priority from a first filing in a Paris Convention country, within 12 months.
PCT national phase — entering India from an international application, at 31 months from the earliest priority date.
Divisional (Section 16) — carved out of a parent where the claims cover more than one invention. Rule 13 was amended in 2024 to confirm a divisional may be filed from a provisional, a complete or an earlier divisional.
Patent of addition (Section 54) — an improvement on your own granted patent, with no separate renewal fees.
Three positive tests must be met, and then the invention must survive a list of statutory exclusions that is stricter in India than in most jurisdictions.
Nothing identical may have been published or used anywhere in the world before your priority date. Indian law recognises absolute novelty — a conference paper, a pitch deck shared without confidentiality, or your own product launch will defeat it.
A technical advance compared with existing knowledge, or economic significance, or both — and not obvious to a person skilled in the art. This is where most objections land, and where most applications are actually won or lost.
The invention must be capable of being made or used in an industry. This is rarely the obstacle, but it does exclude purely theoretical propositions.
Section 3 lists what are not inventions at all. The ones that decide real cases:
A computer programme per se is excluded, but a computer-implemented invention that produces a technical effect is not. The distinction turns on whether the claimed contribution solves a technical problem — improving hardware performance, reducing memory or bandwidth, securing a transmission — rather than merely automating a business outcome.
The practical answer is drafting: anchor the claims in the technical architecture and the effect it produces, and support that effect with data in the description. We cover the current examination approach in our note on AI patent eligibility in India.
The cheapest stage to fail at is the first one. A search costs a fraction of drafting and prosecution, and it answers the only question that matters early: is this already known?
A patentability search examines published patents, applications and non-patent literature worldwide, and maps each feature of your invention against what it finds. The output should not be a list of documents — it should be a feature-by-feature comparison and a clear file / do-not-file opinion.
Three different searches get confused with one another. A patentability search asks whether you can get a patent. A freedom-to-operate analysis asks whether launching would infringe someone else's rights — a different question with a different answer. And a prior art search is the underlying exercise both rely on.
Filing something already published. You pay to draft, file and prosecute an application that cannot be granted.
Claiming too broadly. The search tells the drafter where the existing art stops, so the claims can be pitched just beyond it rather than being cut back under objection later.
Missing a stronger position. Sometimes the search shows the novelty sits in a different feature than the inventor assumed.
A provisional specification describes the invention without claims. It secures a priority date, buys 12 months, and is the right answer when a demo, pitch, publication or trade show is imminent and the invention is still moving. It is not a placeholder: whatever you fail to describe in it is not covered by its priority date, so a thin provisional gives thin protection.
A complete specification carries the full disclosure and the claims. Filing complete directly saves a step and starts the clock earlier, which suits a settled invention.
The trade-offs, and the traps in converting one to the other, are set out in our guide to the provisional patent application in India.
Title — mirrors the independent claim.
Field and background — the technical problem, ending in a clear need.
Summary — the solution in claim-shaped language.
Brief description of drawings.
Detailed description — the enabling disclosure, with reference numerals and
enough working detail for a skilled person to reproduce it.
Claims — the legal boundary. Everything else supports these.
Abstract — 150 words maximum.
What happens, in what order, and what each stage costs in official government fees for an individual, startup or small entity filing electronically.
Feature-by-feature prior-art mapping and a file / do-not-file decision before any drafting spend.
No official feeProvisional or complete. Claims drafted around what the search showed is actually free.
No official feeForm 1 (application), Form 2 (specification), Form 3 (Section 8 statement), Form 5 (declaration of inventorship, with a complete specification), Form 26 (power of attorney if an agent files) and Form 28 for startup or small-entity status.
₹1,600 · ₹8,000 for other applicantsThe application publishes automatically at 18 months from the priority date under Section 11A. Form 9 brings that forward if you want the application public sooner.
Automatic · early publication on Form 9Nothing is examined until you ask. For applications filed on or after 15 March 2024 the request is due within 31 months of the priority or filing date, whichever is earlier — the 2024 amendment cut it from 48 months. Applications filed before that date keep the old 48-month period, so check which regime yours falls under. Either way, miss it and the application is treated as withdrawn, with no recovery.
₹4,000 · ₹20,000 for other applicantsThe examiner raises novelty, inventive step, Section 3, clarity and sufficiency objections, plus formal ones. This is the real contest.
No fee to receiveThe response is due within six months of the FER, extendable by three on request. If objections survive, the Controller offers a hearing under Section 14, followed by written submissions.
Extension fees applyThe patent is granted and published in the Official Journal. The term runs 20 years from the filing date, not from grant.
No separate grant feeEvery one of these fees, including excess pages and claims, is in our Indian patent fee calculator. Once filed, you can follow progress yourself — see how to check an Indian patent application status.
Publication at 18 months is automatic and is the point at which your disclosure becomes prior art against everyone else — including you, for any later filing on the same subject matter. From publication until grant you have provisional rights: you can claim damages for the intervening period once the patent issues, but you cannot sue until it does.
Examination is not automatic. The request on Form 18 must be filed within 31 months for applications filed on or after 15 March 2024, reduced from 48 months by the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2024. Applications filed before that date retain the 48-month period — the two tracks run side by side, and mistaking one for the other is an expensive error. This is one of the few deadlines in Indian patent practice with no safety net, and it is the most common way a good invention is lost.
A trap worth knowing if you arrive through the PCT. For a national phase entry made on or after 15 March 2024, the entry deadline and the examination deadline now fall on the same day — both at 31 months from the earliest priority date. The request for examination has to be filed at the moment of entry, not afterwards. Our PCT national phase deadline calculator gives you that date.
Expedited examination can turn a wait of years into months. It is available to startups, small entities, female applicants, government undertakings, applicants electing India as ISA or IPEA, applicants under a Patent Prosecution Highway arrangement, and several further categories.
It is e-filing only, and the official fee is ₹8,000 for a startup, individual or small entity against ₹60,000 for other eligible applicants. For a company raising a round on the strength of its IP, that is usually the highest-value spend in the whole process.
Filing is administration. The FER is the argument, and it is where the scope of your granted claims is actually decided. A response has to do three things at once: overcome the cited art without giving away more scope than necessary, keep the amended claims supported by the specification as filed, and answer every formal objection so nothing is left outstanding.
The response is due within six months of the FER date, and that period may be extended by up to three months on request — a total of nine. Unlike most Indian patent deadlines, this one cannot be recovered afterwards.
Amendments are constrained by Section 59: you may narrow, disclaim or correct, but you may not add matter or broaden beyond the original disclosure. Most weak responses fail here, by amending to something the specification never taught.
If objections survive the written response, the Controller must offer a hearing before refusing the application. A hearing notice is not a rejection — it is the last structured opportunity to argue, and written submissions follow within fifteen days.
Our own record is built here rather than at filing: an electrical switch application answered on novelty and clarity went from filing to grant in about seven months, and an IoT gas-monitoring application overcame novelty and disclosure objections in a single round.
Nothing is payable for the first two years. From the third year the renewal fee falls due annually: ₹800 for years 3–6, ₹2,400 for years 7–10, ₹4,800 for years 11–15 and ₹8,000 for years 16–20 for an individual, startup or small entity. Companies pay five times these amounts. Paying at least four years in advance by e-filing earns a 10% discount.
A statement of whether the patent is being worked in India used to be an annual duty. Since the 2024 amendment it is filed once every three financial years, within six months of the end of that period, and no longer requires revenue disclosure.
You must keep the Controller informed about corresponding applications filed abroad. The 2024 amendment removed the rolling six-monthly duty: a single updated Form 3 after the FER now suffices, with three months' extra time available.
Miss a renewal and the patent lapses, though it can be restored on application within eighteen months. Miss most other deadlines and the amended Rule 138 allows the Controller to condone the delay by up to six months on Form 4 — a discretion, not a right, as we explain in our note on late national phase entry under Rule 138. Enforcement once granted is a separate subject — see patent infringement remedies.
Before anything else: if you are resident in India, Section 39 requires you either to file in India first, or to obtain a foreign filing licence before filing abroad. Filing overseas without one puts the Indian patent at risk of revocation and carries penalties under Section 118. It is a permission most first-time applicants have never heard of, and it is requested on Form 25.
With that in hand, there are two routes out. The Paris Convention route means filing directly in each country within 12 months of your priority date — faster and cheaper if you want only two or three countries. The PCT route means one international application that preserves your rights in over 150 countries and defers the country-by-country decision to 30 or 31 months.
There is no such thing as an international patent. The PCT delays and consolidates; every grant is still national. Its real value to a startup is eighteen extra months to see which markets matter before committing the money.
Our guides cover what the Patent Cooperation Treaty is and national phase filing into India, and the PCT national phase deadline calculator computes the entry date for every major office from your priority date.
Official government fees only, e-filing. Professional fees are separate and we quote them fixed, stage by stage, within 24 hours.
| Stage | Individual · startup · small entity | Other applicants | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Filing (up to 30 pages, 10 claims) | ₹1,600 | ₹8,000 | Day 0 |
| Each page over 30 | ₹160 | ₹800 | Day 0 |
| Each claim over 10 | ₹320 | ₹1,600 | Day 0 |
| Request for examination (Form 18) | ₹4,000 | ₹20,000 | By 31 months |
| Expedited examination (Form 18A) | ₹8,000 | ₹60,000 | Optional, e-filing only |
| Renewals, years 3–20 in total | ₹76,800 | ₹3,84,000 | Annually from year 3 |
| Pre-grant opposition (fee introduced in 2024) | ₹4,000 | ₹20,000 | If opposed |
| Extension or condonation, Rule 138 | ₹10,000 per month | ₹50,000 per month | If a deadline slips |
For an individual or DPIIT-recognised startup filing electronically within the page and claim limits, the official cost from filing to grant is about ₹5,600 — ₹1,600 to file and ₹4,000 to request examination. A company pays five times that. Physical filing costs roughly 10% more at every step and is rarely worth it.
The larger number is renewals: keeping a patent for its full 20-year term adds ₹76,800 for a qualifying applicant. Our breakdown of patent cost in India works through the variables.
Publication comes at 18 months. Examination depends on when you request it and on the examiner's queue — an ordinary application commonly sees its FER two to four years after filing, while expedited examination under Rule 24C can bring that down to months.
Speed also comes from how the file is run — fast examination requests and fast, complete responses. One of our matters ran from filing to grant in about seven months on that basis.
DPIIT-recognised startups also get an 80% rebate on official fees — see startup IP benefits in India.
Typically three to five years from filing to grant on the ordinary route, because examination only begins after you request it and then waits in the examiner's queue. Expedited examination under Rule 24C shortens this substantially — grants within a year of filing are achievable where the request is made early and the examination report is answered promptly.
Official fees start at ₹1,600 for an individual, DPIIT-recognised startup, small entity or educational institution filing electronically, plus ₹4,000 to request examination — about ₹5,600 to grant. Other applicants pay ₹8,000 and ₹20,000 respectively. Renewals for the full 20-year term add ₹76,800 for a qualifying applicant. Professional fees are separate.
File a provisional if a demo, pitch, publication or trade show is imminent and the invention is still developing — it secures your priority date and gives you 12 months to file the complete specification. If the invention is settled, filing complete directly saves a step and starts examination sooner. A thin provisional is a false economy: anything it fails to describe does not get the earlier date.
A computer programme per se is excluded by Section 3(k), but a computer-implemented invention that produces a technical effect can be patented. The claims must be anchored in the technical architecture and the effect it produces — improved performance, reduced memory or bandwidth, better security — rather than in an automated business outcome. Drafting decides this more than the underlying technology does.
The application is treated as withdrawn and cannot be revived. The deadline is 31 months from the priority or filing date for applications filed on or after 15 March 2024, reduced from 48 months by the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2024; applications filed before that date keep the 48-month period. Check which track your application is on — it is the one deadline in Indian patent practice we advise clients to diarise twice.
If you are resident in India, yes — Section 39 requires you either to file in India first and wait six weeks, or to obtain a foreign filing licence on Form 25. Filing abroad without complying exposes the Indian patent to revocation and carries penalties under Section 118. This is the requirement first-time applicants most often breach without realising.
Twenty years from the date of filing — not from the date of grant. Renewal fees are payable annually from the third year, and a lapsed patent may be restored on application within eighteen months of the lapse.
No. Patents are territorial and there is no international patent. Protection abroad requires filing in each country or region, either directly under the Paris Convention within 12 months of your priority date, or through a PCT international application that defers the country-by-country decision to 30 or 31 months.
Tell us what you have built. You will get a straight answer on whether it is patentable, what the official fees will be, and a fixed professional-fee quote within 24 hours. If a search says do not file, we will tell you that too.
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