- Case number
- C.A.(COMM.IPD-PAT) 121/2022
- Court
- Delhi High Court
- Date of judgment
- Outcome
- Set aside
Headnote
Refusal under section 3(k) and for want of inventive step set aside because the Controller applied the superseded 2016 Computer Related Inventions Guidelines instead of the Revised Guidelines of 2017. The requirement of novel hardware existed only in the 2016 Guidelines and is a higher standard with no basis in law. The correct question is whether the invention makes a technical contribution or produces a technical effect, here whether the system reduces the time taken to schedule job execution in a high-performance computing system. Following Microsoft Technology Licensing, examiners must analyse the substance of the invention rather than the form of the claims and take the claims as a whole, which clause 4.4.4 of the 2017 Guidelines itself underscores. The words per se in section 3(k) were inserted deliberately, as the Report of the Joint Committee on the Patents (Second Amendment) Bill records, so that genuine inventions developed on computer programs are not refused, a position similar to Article 52 of the European Patent Convention.
Headnote by BRB Legal, written from the judgment: a summary for reference, not legal advice. Read the judgment itself before relying on it.