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Intellectual property and Geographical Indications

Intellectual property in the news: patents and their disputes, copyright and new technology, trademarks, and the products that win Geographical Indication tags. Prelims has asked which products hold Geographical Indication tags and why India enacted the Geographical Indications Act.

Foundation note: Intellectual property: the rights, the Acts and India's flexibilities

Showing 1 of 3 articles, those that changed from 1 to 30 June 2026.Show all

Research integrity: fake patents and retractions

Prelims and Mains

Design applications are not examined for novelty, unlike patents, and cover how an object looks, not how it works.

United States design patents need a novelty review; the United Kingdom, India and Australia issue design registrations with minimal review.
Academics buy inventorship positions and present them as "international patents" for promotion.
Experts blame rankings that count patents and papers without regard to quality.
A retraction is the formal withdrawal of a published paper for error or misconduct, and the count of retractions is used as a measure of a country's research integrity.
India ranks among the three countries with the most retractions.

Patent, US design patent, design registration

	Patent	Design patent (United States)	Design registration (United Kingdom, India, Australia)
What it covers	The invention, how it works	How an object looks	How an object looks, not how it works
How it is examined	Examined for novelty and innovation	A novelty review	Minimal review; in the United Kingdom usually granted in about 11 days

A design registration protects only appearance and is barely examined, which is why it can be bought and passed off as an international patent.Source: The Hindu, 25 June 2026

What changed

25 Jun 2026New
- A report in the International Journal of Educational Integrity says eight firms are likely selling thousands of United Kingdom registered designs, usually granted in about 11 days, to Indian academics to inflate their reputations.
Mains: Metric driven rankings of scientists and institutions fuel fake patents and fake papers.
The Hindu, 25 Jun 2026: A black market for 'fake patents' is a new poison in Indian research (opens in a new tab)

Also filed elsewhere

Copyright in a machine generated work · on AI governance, safety and ethics
Copyright in a machine generated work turns on authorship: a copyright needs an author, and an author in Indian law is a person.