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IP Case Digest · Patents Act s.10

Section 10, Patents Act: case law

4 judgments of the Delhi High Court and the Madras High Court applying Patents Act s.10, from 2023–2025, each with a headnote by BRB Legal.

4judgments
2courts
2023–2025years

Saint Gobain Glass France v. Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs and Ors., C.A.(COMM.IPD-PAT) 13/2024

Delhi High Court · Dismissed

Appeal dismissed and a refusal for want of inventive step upheld, which makes this a useful counterweight to the many appeals in which refusals are set aside. The Court held that the Controller had rightly analysed the application against the cited prior art and the data in the complete specification, and had rightly concluded that the claimed improvement was obvious to the person skilled in the art and showed no technical advancement. It rejected the argument that a corresponding grant in France entitled the applicant to a patent here, holding that patent rights are territorial, that every regime requires an independent assessment of novelty, inventive step and industrial application against its own standards, and that even the notional person skilled in the art differs between jurisdictions.

E. R. Squibb And Sons, Llc & Ors. v. ZYDUS LIFESCIENCES LIMITED, CS(COMM) 376/2024

Delhi High Court · Injunction granted

Interim injunction granted restraining a biosimilar of Nivolumab during the pendency of the suit. The Court weighed that the patent was valid in fifty countries and had been sustained against challenge in thirty, that it had been granted only after fourteen years, which itself shortened the limited monopoly, that a pre-grant opposition by an association of which the defendant is a member had been rejected, and that the defendant had been under injunction for more than a year and had no manufacturing licence until December 2024.

Robert Bosch Limitada v. Deputy Controller of Patents and Designs, C.M.A.(PT) 31/2023

Madras High Court · Remanded

The application was rejected essentially for insufficiency of description, a ground neither the First Examination Report nor the hearing notice had ever indicated. The applicant would therefore have had no opportunity to supply the description the Controller had in mind, and the Controller did not engage with inventive step at all.

Qualcomm Incorporated v. Controller of Patents and Others, C.A.(COMM.IPD-PAT) 275/2022

Delhi High Court · Remanded

Refusal under sections 3(k) and 10 set aside. The order recorded that responses had been filed to the objections and that the applicant had been heard, but made no reference to the contents of those submissions and returned no finding on their merits, the Deputy Controller simply noting his entire agreement with the Examiner and giving no reasons for it. An order which does not deal with the submissions advanced before the authority passing it suffers from manifest non-application of mind and is ex facie unreasoned, and cannot sustain in law or on facts. Such orders reduce the examination of the application, the raising of objections and the opportunity to respond to an empty paper formality. The order also returned a finding on a claim that the applicant had already withdrawn on amendment, instead of addressing the claims that survived.

Other provisions of the Patents Act

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