Amendments in Patent Application Process in Singapore

The process of applying for patents in Singapore will become much easier and more efficient after Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), in its continued efforts to ease patent application process, has introduced few changes in Patent forms 1 and 12B. According to a circular released on November 21, 2017 on IPOS website [1], these changes will be effective from 10 December 2017 [1] and will be available to Patent Applicants from that date. IPOS claims that after these changes the patent application process will be enhanced for general Applicants.

Amendments to ‘Patents form 1’ [2]

a. Patents forms 1 & 8 will be merged

This change will allow Applicants to enter details of inventors for which the patent has been applied in part 7 of the newly merged form i.e. merged ‘form 1’ & 8. There will be no need to file a separate form 8. It is a welcome move for the Applicants as they will not have to fill multiple forms. In addition to this, the Applicants will now be able to derive rights from the Inventor. Applicants can do this by filling in part 8 of the newly merged form. However, these amendments will not change the process of correcting the details of the inventors i.e. Patents Form 13 will not be applicable for such amendment or correction. Applicants will also be able to submit the details of the inventor separately by filling Patent Form 8 which will still be available for submissions.

b. A separate attachment for sequence listing

A new document will also be available for “sequence listing” for attachment at the time of filing of patent applications. A “sequence listing” is a list of biological sequences in the format prescribed by WIPO Standard ST.25 (Presentation of nucleotide and amino acid sequence listings) using controlled vocabulary (i.e. defined terms for certain features). This document will be available to patent applicants in case they do not want to include sequence listing as a part of description or claims. Also, the applicants will be able to paginate this document and will be able to indicate the page count of sequence listing document in a separate field.

In addition to this, if Applicants want to submit sequence listing as a separate reference document, not forming part of the description or claims, such document can be submitted using the mentioned “sequence listing” document type with a cover letter attached to indicate that it will serve as a reference document only.

c. A new feature of auto-population during divisional filings

Yet another efficient and productive move by the IPOS is the introduction of auto-population feature when a divisional application is being filed. This means that when an Applicant files a divisional application, relevant information from the parent application will be auto-populated for the convenience of the Applicants. Having said that, the Applicants will still be able to amend the auto-populated fields if they choose to do the same.

Amendments to Patents ‘Form 12B’ [3]

Similar to the changes in Patents form 1, for the ease of Applicants, Patents Form 13 will also be merged with Patents Form 12B. Applicants don’t need to fill Form 13 in case they wish to make amendments to the specification when requesting for an examination review report using Patents Form 12B, and can do so by selecting the option “Written submissions and proposed amendments are filed” in Patents form B. With this selection, the Applicant will be required to submit both a clean and a marked up copy of the amendment of the specification.

Conclusion

Such amendments in the Patent Application process as mentioned above will be available from December 10, 2017. Further, these changes will ease the application process and will allow Applicants some flexibility in sequence listing, and amending details of inventors as well as amending the specification.

Author: Shilpi Saxena, Jr. Patent Associate at Khurana & Khurana Advocates and IP Attorneys can be reached at [email protected].

References: