- Case number
- C.A.(COMM.IPD-PAT) 196/2022
- Court
- Delhi High Court
- Date of judgment
- Judge
- Sanjeev Narula
- Outcome
- Remanded
Headnote
Refusal under section 3(h), with an amendment disallowed under section 59, set aside on both counts. On procedure, section 138(4) makes the claims as filed in the international application part of the complete specification for Indian purposes, so where no Form 13 was filed at national phase entry the examination had to be confined to the original PCT claims; the Controller wrongly measured the amended claims against the modified claims filed at national phase instead. Rule 20 was amended in 2016 to permit deletion of claims at national phase entry without a formal amendment application, but deletion only: addition, revision and modification still require section 57. For an application predating that amendment, deletion was not available at all, so the argument that the applicant had deleted claims and could not reintroduce them misread the procedure. On section 3(h) the order merely repeated the Examiner's statement that a method of preventing plant diseases is a method of agriculture, with no analysis of why, and a clear distinction must be drawn between purely agricultural methods and those resting on a technical or scientific foundation.
Headnote by BRB Legal, written from the judgment: a summary for reference, not legal advice. Read the judgment itself before relying on it.