There are procedures involved in securing a patent beauty product in India, each of which must be fulfilled or otherwise the patent application gets cancelled. Read this article to know everything that you must be aware of before applying for utility patent protection.
How to Patent A Beauty Product
The urban communities across India are experiencing a boom in the cosmetics market, especially throughout the last ten years. Right now, clients can discover an exhaustive array of beauty products in the Indian market owing to the impact of western brands. In such a scenario, it is necessary to patent beauty products if you are planning to launch your brand so that you can safeguard your key business secrets in this highly competitive market. The BIS or Bureau of Indian Standardization monitors and controls the quality of various beauty products like creams, skin powders, soaps, hair oil, etc. In this article, we will discuss the effective ways you can follow to secure your exclusive patent beauty product.
Can You Obtain a Patent for Beauty Products?
Cosmetics or beauty products can be patented; they must fulfil the Indian Trademarks Registry standards. A range of ingredients or raw substances is processed together to form a compound, which we refer to as cosmetic. To secure a patent, you must prove that your specific formula of combining materials qualifies as a patentable matter. The mixture must be unique, useful and non-obvious.
For a brand to patent a beauty product, they have to reveal everything starting from the procedure involved in manufacturing the product to the usage of each ingredient, no matter how negligible it might be, to ensure the safest patent protection possible. Some companies are reluctant to reveal the secret sauce as they fear this will adversely affect their hard work and all investments in creating a unique product. We Can make the Permanent Patent Filing Online for most of the Products.
If you desire to protect your trading assets via patent, you have no option but to reveal the process. This gets announced publicly once the patent office approves your patent. Patenting is to enjoy a monopoly over your discovered formula. This assures you a sense of relief that no other enterprise can duplicate your product.
In other words, a company gaining a patent is entitled by the law to restrict everyone from manufacturing or selling the patent beauty product for a limited time. In the case of utility patents like that of beauty products, the validity period is set as 20 years, counting from the date an originator files a patent application wishing to secure the beauty product.
While patents empower you with the authority to exclude others from selling your patented beauty products, it eventually depends on you how effectively you can enforce the delegated powers. It is your task to identify the copycats in the Indian market and file lawsuits against them.
Necessary Conditions to Patent Beauty Product
In this blog section, we have jotted down the standards the Indian patent office laid down that must be met to get patent approval for a beauty product or skincare item.
- The product should feature patentable subject matter: The patent office has specified that each utility product must include something that can be considered patentable. Cosmetics fulfil this criterion as they are an amalgamation of different individual ingredients. The final product is consumer-ready that represents a harmless composition. Other than this, three more conditions must be met by the company launching a beauty product to satisfy the patent office for obtaining the patent.
- The beauty product has to be novel: The inventions presented before the patent granting officers are expected to be novel. Simply put, the inventor has to convince that his cosmetic formulation is new. Suppose a creator has taken a cosmetic formula after drawing inspiration from some product that was presented online; his patent proposal will not be granted because the base formula is no longer new. This might give rise to a dilemma among the readers that whenever we are stressing the term ‘new,’ you may wonder that all-inclusive materials need to be new, but that is not the case. The result that is getting prepared from mixing all the ingredients should produce a chemically new formula.
- The beauty product is non-obvious: This is a critical concept. The inventor must ensure that the cosmetic he has brought in front of the jury represents a formulation that a proficient individual familiar with the cosmetic industry would not consider your product obvious. It is a tricky condition as patenting is only possible when the used chemicals are used in a proportion and combination that nobody has ever tried or thought of.
The Cost for Patent and examiner judges a beauty product’s nonobviousness concerning an ordinary cosmetic user. Subjective enquiries are conducted involving people who use cosmetics. If the patent officer concludes that the invention was generic, we proceed to the next step of patenting your beauty product.
- The product should make sense: To patent a product, an investor must prove that his proposed beauty product is useful.
- Applications rarely get disapproved of the fact that they do not offer a practical implementation. But still, it is a mandatory step that should not be skipped.
To prove usefulness, an applicant must be convinced that the beauty product presents some notable benefit to the client. Suppose you have applied for a facial cream patent, then you need to show that it scientifically benefits the one using it; this can be wrinkle reduction, sun protection, etc.
If your invention passes all the conditions mentioned above, you will be duly granted patent protection for your proposed beauty product.
How Long Can You Patent Beauty Products in India
Patent terms and conditions are established by statute. At present, an active patent’s lifespan is estimated to be 20 years starting from the day the inventor filed the patenting request in India. This law is in accordance with the 1970’s Indian Patents Act. However, several standards must be met before you may eventually protect these utility products. The conditions have been vividly described in the above sections.
Conclusion
Beauty product patents fall within the utility patents’ bracket mainly due to their composition and formulation. To secure patent protection, none of the ingredients must be patented before. The mixture should be novel and non-obvious based on the opinion of the patent examiner and ordinary people engaged in subjective enquiries. Lastly, the proposed item should indicate consumer benefits.
Manufacturers even file for design patents when they have worked on creating an exclusive packaging design that they would want to protect from getting copied. For that, there is a whole different set of procedures involved.
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