In 2007, 1.8 million patent applications (all industries put together) were filed worldwide. Patent services offshoring involves the background work for filing the patents which includes patent searches, patent proofreading, patent drafting and patent litigation support.

Patents services offshoring:
The patents services offshoring industry in India is broadly divided into 3 categories: captives, third-party multi service providers, and third-party pure play patent service providers.

India:
There are 50 vendors offering patent services in India. They employ over 1500 professionals in India and are project to employ over four times this number by 2012. The slowdown in the US has led the Indian companies grow by 200% in the last 12 months.

Information in patents:
Companies, individuals and entities file and publish patents to protect their new ideas. A large part of information available in patents is not available from any other source. This information helps understand about the evolving technologies and the upcoming changes.

About 275 US, European and PCT inkjet patents are published each month. Studying them is a tedious task.

Leading inkjet companies:
Recently, Silverbrook has emerged as the company filing the largest number of inkjet patents. HP does not any more figure in the top 3 patent filers/ publishers. Other leading companies having vigorous patent activities are: Brother, Seiko Epson, Canon, Fujifilm (various subsidiaries), Toshiba TEC and Océ.

Inkjet patent review service:
Reports prepared by global associates of III are available several times a year. These are available on an annual subscription basis.  Most of the key players within the ink jet industry have chosen to subscribe to such reports.

Subscribe:
To know more and subscribe to the inkjet patent service, please write to info@iii.ind.in writing “Inkjet patent review service: in the subject line.