The Singapore Patents Act has been amended by the Patents (Amendment) Act 2012; the new law comes into force on 14 February 2014.
The new law introduces a supplementary examination process, which is mandatory if the applicant wishes to rely on the grant of a foreign corresponding application for the grant of the Singapore patent.
Recently, as a result of a number of discussions with IPOS officials and IPOS examiners, it has become clear that there are number of potential issues with supplementary examination under the amended act.
These issues potentially affect all patent applications, with particular issues arising in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and life science areas.
The Minister of Law yesterday made the following Notification to implement the amendments to the Patents Act of Singapore, passed by Parliament in July 2012:
Updated 19 February 2014 to correct Service Bureau surcharge waiver period.
Updated 12 February 2014 to reflect extension of excluded days originally announced by IPOS and information on waiver of Service Bureau Surcharges
A bunch of us patent professionals (including patent attorneys and patent lawyers) were invited to meet representatives of the Intellectual Property Office (IPOS) today.
In the 2.5 hour long meeting, IPOS gave us a briefing and update on the implementation of the amended Singapore Patents Act and Rules.
This post discusses some highlights of the session relating to commencement and electronic filing (e-filing):
We’ve recently had to file voluntary amendments to the patent specifications of a number of Singapore patent applications we are handling for our clients.
In the course of preparing the voluntary amendments, we’ve noticed an interesting anomaly in the patent records as kept by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS, the Singapore Patent Office or Singapore Patent Registry).