As the country moves rapidly towards a new patent regime in 2005, there will be a massive increase in demand for attorneys who are well versed in international patent laws, according to S Majumdar, one of the best known patent attorneys in the country.

Speaking at a symposium on "Current Trends in Pharmaceutical Sciences" held in Ahmedabad on January 23 and 24, Majumdar explained that even in the current system of process patents, many companies found it extremely difficult to protect their patents effectively.

The symposium was organised by the Ramanbhai Foundation and was held at the Zydus Research Centre (ZRC), located about 20 km away from Ahmedabad city.

The Kolkatta-based attorney related several instances where companies that infringed the patent rights of other firms were able to get away because of legal technicalities.

"Hence we must have many more lawyers that understand the patent laws, and the norms that have to followed at the time of filing a patent application," Majumdar said, adding that judges also would need to appreciate the intricacies of patent litigation.

Side by side, he said the 'inventors' should keep in mind that the secret of a good patent, which is commercially exploitable, lay in the quality of 'novelty search' conducted at the earliest stage of the process. Many potential inventions had failed because of the failure to make absolutely certain that the proposed patent was indeed a novel product.

As an example, he told the story of a patent applicant who had come to him with a bromide-based flame retardant compound. At that point, a patent already existed for a chlorine-based flame retardant, and this made the new application almost untenable.

Majumdar emphasised that the 'novelty search' procedure has to be conducted not once but several times during different stages of obtaining a patent, because technology would not remain static during that period. Hence something which was 'novel' at the start of the process might not remain so at a later stage.