India has proposed discussions about gender equality and women's issues in its free trade agreement with the four-nation European Free Trade Association (EFTA), according to Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. The nations which are part of EFTA are Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, and not the European Union.
Piyush mentioned this at the event of World Intellectual Property Day 2023. He further stated that some people believe that India is hesitant to handle these new issues in FTAs with its trading partners. He added that the IP office has created 1000 new positions to facilitate patent application approvals.
According to him, the EFTA nations won't mind if there is no chapter on women in the free trade agreement but India wants to talk about gender equality and women on ETA.
India has previously opposed the inclusion of non-trade issues like gender in its trade agreements.
Piyush said that the IP office has created over 1000 new positions to include more controllers to clear the applications of the patent. To know how to digitalize the entire IP ecosystem, he is personally taking the reviews.
No one will be granted to enter the IP offices in the coming weeks and there would be zero interaction between people, lawyers, and the IP office. People can only contact us by video conferencing.
The aim of taking this step is to create a system of government that is entirely corruption free. The last fiscal year saw around 82,000 patent applications, with 58 percent of them being by Indian companies.
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