Haryana government has launched a scheme to grant financial assistance of up to Rs 25 lakh to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) for registration of patents for products and processes.

To promote patent registration among enterprises and protect their innovation, the state government has implemented the ‘Patent Registration Scheme’ for MSME, Industries Minister Capt Abhimanyu said.

He said that a notification to this effect has been issued by the Department.

Under this scheme, the government has made provision for grant of financial assistance on grant of patent registration with the objective of securing the rights of enterprises over their traditional product or process.

Under this, reimbursement of 50 per cent of the actual expenses, including filing, consultancy, search and maintenance fee, would be granted, subject to a maximum of Rs 25 lakh for both domestic and international patent registration.

The minister said that the scheme would provide assistance for obtaining patent registration on the products of the enterprises, and would remain in operation for a period of five years.

The MSMEs which have acquired patent registration after August 14, 2015 and before August 14, 2020 would be eligible under this scheme.

The Minister said that patent was an exclusive right granted by the State or International Agency for an invention that is new, involves an inventive step and is capable of industrial application.

It gives its owner an exclusive right to prevent or stop others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing a product or a process, based on the patented invention, without the owner’s prior permission, he said.

The Minister said that to avail the benefits of the scheme, an application on prescribed form for the reimbursement of expenses incurred in acquiring patent registration along with listed documents need to be submitted to the Director of Industries and Commerce, through the web portal of the Department.

The deficiencies, if any, would be communicated to the applicant on-line within 10 working days and the applicant would be given eight weeks to rectify the deficiencies so pointed out, he said.

Source: The Economic Times