A group of industry associations on intellectual property has asked the government to reconsider a proposal to abolish the Intellectual Property Appellate Board, saying such a move would be prejudicial to India’s credibility as an IP jurisdiction and lower IP standards in India. The board was set up in 2003 to hear appeals against decisions of the registrar under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, and the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999.

The associations have written to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, law and justice minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, and commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal, asking them to reconsider the inclusion of IPAB in the Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Bill, 2021, which seeks to scrap various tribunals.

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“Had there been any consultations with the stakeholders IP owners, the industry, IP practitioners—this bill would not have included within it the abolition of IPAB,” the four associations said. Citing the IPAB’s “marvelous record” of reversing unreasonable decisions by the Patents Office, they said the board was not a drain on the national exchequer and no cost-benefit analysis was presented to back the rationale of “considerable expense”. The expenditure on maintaining IPAB from 2018 to 2020 was only Rs 13.65 crore, they said.