Old records washed out at Patent Office in floods

On Tuesday, several employees of the Intellectual Property Office Building, were seen removing the files from the basement in an attempt to salvage the documents by drying it out in the open.

Sources in the office, on condition of anonymity said the files, which are to be preserved safely were placed in the basement where the flood waters entered and damaged the records. “These files need to be maintained in a safe manner in a waterproof vault, like how banks do. But these files were stored in the basement due to which they got damaged,” the sources said.

Concern was raised over the fact that it would be difficult for the Patent Office to verify the physical documents for the previous years as they were destroyed in the flood. Hence the office would have to come up with a mechanism to retrieve these records and preserve them safely.

When contacted, Dr SP Subramaniyan, Assistant Controller of Patents & Designs at the Patent Office in Chennai said the affected files were old ones. All the new files were safe, as all documents filed from the 1990s onwards were digitised. So patent applicants have no reason to worry.

“We have granted patents to over half of the cases and have processed cases up to the year 2010,” he added.