The 8th BRICS HIPO (Head of Intellectual Property Offices) meeting was held at New Delhi under India’s Chairmanship. The meeting was chaired by ShriO.P.Gupta, Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks and GI. All Head of IP offices from the BRICS countries led their delegation in this meeting. Altogether 17 participants from BRICS countries participated in the said event. Shri Rajiv Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India delivered the keynote address.

The meeting reviewed the progress of IP cooperation between the BRICS countries in the past years and also deliberated and adopted documents within six cooperation areas based on the BRICS IPR Cooperation Roadmap programme. During the year India successfully conducted BRICS Examiners Training program and BRICS IP Coordinators meeting at Nagpur, besides 7th BRICS HIPO Meeting at Geneva on the side-lines meeting of WIPO General Assemblies.

During the two days meeting, the BRICS IP offices held talks and reached agreement to work out for a common vision on a number oftopical issues of IP development on global scale such as “Exceptions and Limitations” & “Markush Structure related Inventions”; “IP and Development” and also exchanged views on subjects such as joint comparative studies on specific topics of IP law and IP distance education, common views on the issues of working committee meetings at the WIPO and other international fora etc. New joint promising projects within the framework of mandates of each office such as exchange of patent information, creation of a common website of BRICS IP Offices, Classification of Traditional knowledge and Reclassification, support of SME’s were also presented by the respective offices.After the two days deliberations, the BRICS IP offices unanimously adopted and signed the summary report of the meeting. Finally the Indian side handed over the Chairmanship to CNIPA-China.