- Case number
- (T)CMA(PT) No.159 of 2023
- Court
- Madras High Court
- Date of judgment
- Judge
- Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy
- Outcome
- Remanded
Headnote
Refusal under section 3(k) set aside. The claimed invention was held not to be a computer programme per se or an algorithm: it involves technical considerations, achieved by technical means and implemented on a computer using hardware such as processors and search engines, and so cannot be characterised as solely linguistic or semantic. The Controller had recorded that section 2(1)(j) was satisfied and had rejected the application on section 3(k) alone, so that conclusion removed the only ground of refusal. The matter was nevertheless remanded on a narrow point: the claims were too wide, not limited to any specific normalisation or matching process, so a patent as claimed would monopolise any method of normalising, matching and retrieving database records by similarity of search queries.
Headnote by BRB Legal, written from the judgment: a summary for reference, not legal advice. Read the judgment itself before relying on it.