- Case number
- AID No. 20 of 2022
- Court
- Calcutta High Court
- Date of judgment
- Judge
- Ravi Krishan Kapur
- Outcome
- Remanded
Headnote
Refusal set aside on four grounds. An anticipating prior art must disclose the whole of the invention and contain sufficient information to allow it to be put into practice, dealing with the invention in completeness, and the order never demonstrated how the cited document did so. More fundamentally, the grounds of lack of novelty and lack of inventive step cannot work in tandem on the same document: the tests are different and cannot coexist, so a document said to contain every feature of the invention cannot simultaneously render it obvious when read with five others. Mosaicing is permissible but the reasons for it must be clearly spelt out, and there must be a common thread linking the claim to the cited documents such that the skilled person faced with the claim would turn to another citation to supplement it. On Enercon, the mere existence in the prior art of each element of the invention does not ipso facto mean obviousness, since most inventions are built with prior known puzzle-pieces; there must be a coherent thread whose tracing follows obviously, or it is hindsight deduction. Reasons are the links between the facts and the conclusion, and there were none. Finally, section 13(3) requires an amended specification to be re-examined and a report issued as under section 12, so citing additional objections in a hearing notice without issuing a Second Examination Report violated the statute.
Headnote by BRB Legal, written from the judgment: a summary for reference, not legal advice. Read the judgment itself before relying on it.