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IP Case Digest · Patents Act s.107

Section 107, Patents Act: case law

3 judgments of the Delhi High Court applying Patents Act s.107, from 2025, each with a headnote by BRB Legal.

3judgments
1court
2025years

F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ag & Anr. v. Natco Pharma Limited, CM APPL. 17608/2025, CM APPL. 17609/2025, CM APPL. 17610/2025, CM APPL. 17611/2025, CM APPL. 17612/2025, CM APPL. 17613/2025 & CM APPL. 17614/2025

Delhi High Court · Dismissed

Division Bench declined to interfere with the refusal of an interim injunction over Risdiplam. A defendant resisting injunction need only raise a credible challenge to validity under section 107 read with section 64, and is not required to make out a cast iron case; where the Single Judge finds such a challenge established, an appellate court should step back unless the challenge is not credible or incorrect principles were applied, following Wander. The Bench held the Single Judge had correctly found the species patent prima facie obvious over the genus patent on four grounds: four lead inventors were common to both; the genus patent provided for various fused ring heterocycles with nitrogen placed at different positions in the same ring; the imidazo[1,2-b]pyridazinyl substitution was specifically disclosed; and N and CH fall in the same vertical column under Grimm's Hydride Displacement Law.

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.

Macleods Pharmaceuticals Ltd v. The Controller of Patents & Anr., C.O.(COMM.IPD-PAT) 38/2022

Delhi High Court · Rectification allowed

Objections to the maintainability of a revocation petition rejected on two grounds. First, a petition under section 64 is not barred because the petitioner has also pleaded invalidity as a defence under section 107 in the patentee's infringement suit. The two are entirely different in scope and effect: revocation under section 64 operates in rem and removes the patent from the Register, while a finding of invalidity on a section 107 defence binds only the contesting parties, and section 114 lets the court still grant relief on claims that are valid. Section 58(1) allows the High Court in a revocation proceeding to permit amendment of the specification instead of revoking, which it cannot do on a section 107 defence. It is the party's choice whether to file a standalone petition or a counter-claim in the suit, and nothing in the Act curtails that choice. Second, the petition survives expiry of the patent term. The petitioner is a person interested under section 2(1)(t), and since the patentee's own suit survives expiry for the purpose of damages, the same rationale keeps the revocation petition alive.

Other provisions of the Patents Act

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