The Indian Patent Office has published "draft" Guidelines for examination of Pharmaceutical patent applications on 28 February 2014.

Apart from a general directive aimed at stricter examination of pharmaceutical Patent applications, the Indian Patent Office has laid down guidelines for examiners to ensure:

• Support of all embodiments of claims in the specification, in case of Markush claims
  
• Prior Art Search done by examiners to include the International Non-Proprietary Names (INN) of compounds. Please note that the Indian Patent Office had earlier notified all applicants to ensure that the International Non-Proprietary Names (INN) of compounds is included in the patent specification.
  
• Pharmaceutical USE Claims will be objected to and deemed non-patentable.