- Case number
- IPDPTA No. 12 of 2023
- Court
- Calcutta High Court
- Date of judgment
- Judge
- Krishna Rao
- Outcome
- Remanded
Headnote
Refusal of an oral insulin formulation application quashed. Where the Controller had treated one document as anticipating the claimed invention in its completeness, there was no need to combine it with further documents to show lack of inventive step. No cited document taught including both of the claimed components in a single oral solid formulation, one of them taught away from a claimed component, and a skilled person reading the prior art without hindsight would have been led elsewhere. The elimination of an essential element of the prior art is itself inventive and not obvious. The Court applied the five-step obviousness inquiry from Hoffmann-La Roche v. Cipla and the principles in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. BDR, including that a party claiming obviousness through a mosaic must show how the skilled person would have been led to combine the documents. Details of corresponding foreign applications and grants had been supplied under section 8 and, though not binding, ought to have been considered. The Controller had also failed to comply with Rule 28(5), which requires him, after hearing, to specify or permit such amendment of the specification as he thinks fit to put the application in order.
Headnote by BRB Legal, written from the judgment: a summary for reference, not legal advice. Read the judgment itself before relying on it.