- Case number
- (T)CMA(PT) No.9 of 2023
- Court
- Madras High Court
- Date of judgment
- Outcome
- Set aside
Headnote
Refusal of a product claim to an orally, rapidly disintegrating tablet for want of inventive step set aside, with the objection under section 3(e) remitted. The applicant had already been granted a patent on a co-pending application for the process of preparing the tablet. The Court held that having granted the process patent the Controller was estopped from reopening that process, finding it no different from the prior art, and so refusing the product: product patents and process patents are different, and obtaining one does not bar an application for the other, though a process patentee cannot claim monopoly over the product or stop another arriving at it by a different process. The finding that coated tablets of the compound were well known to the skilled person was made without citing any document, and the reasons the applicant had given on the cited prior art were never discussed. On section 3(e) the Controller held the objection unmet without discussing the explanations at all.
Headnote by BRB Legal, written from the judgment: a summary for reference, not legal advice. Read the judgment itself before relying on it.