Kamdhenu Ltd. Vs The Registrar of Trade Marks (July 2023) judgment discusses the concept of well-known trademarks and the procedure for determining a trademark as a well-known trademark. It explains that historically, trademarks were registered for specific goods, and the use of the mark by others in relation to similar or related goods could constitute infringement....Read More

In Monsanto Technology LLC Vs the Union of India and others (June 2023), the petitioner [Monsanto] filed a writ petition in the High Court of Madras seeking to challenge and quash an order issued by the Assistant Controller of Patents [Respondent] rejecting their patent application and requesting a re-hearing of the matter. The petitioner had applied for a...Read More

Section 3(d) is unique to India and the Patents Act, 1970 as amended in 2005, aimed to restrict patent protection for new forms of known substances unless they led to enhancement in the efficacy of the original substance. It specifically targeted so called evergreening of patents, which is understood to involve obtaining a patent for...Read More

In Guangdong Oppo Mobile Vs The Controller Of Patents And Others (June 2023), an electronics manufacturer, Guangdong Oppo Mobile filed a patent application in India for a charging system and method, as well as a power adapter. The invention aimed to provide a power adapter that could apply a pulsating waveform voltage directly to a...Read More

DELHI HIGH COURT: The Delhi High Court has become a prominent centre for intellectual property litigation in India. Recently, the Court addressed the issue of allowable claim amendments under Section 59(1) of the Patents Act. In the case of Allergan Inc. v. The Controller of Patents, the court overturned the decision of the Indian Patent...Read More

In one of the earliest and landmark decision of Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978), the Supreme Court of India held that the right to be heard is an essential element of the principles of natural justice. The Court also emphasized therein that any decision affecting the rights of individuals must be reasoned and...Read More

Thirteen (13) years back, in Yahoo v. Controller of Patents (2010) case, Yahoo sought to patent a computer network search apparatus method that allowed advertisers to bid for favorable ad placement on web pages. However, the Controller and the Intellectual Property Appellate Tribunal (IPAB) determined that the invention was merely a business strategy and not...Read More

Swarup Kumar, Managing Partner of Kumar & Sardana Associates (KSA) was recently elected as the Deputy Secretary General (DSG) of FICPI, the International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys during the FICPI World Congress held in Cannes. He is the first ever Indian IP Attorney to make it to the FICPI Bureau since it was found...Read More

The Indian Patent Office (IPO) issued three notifications on December 26, 2022. The members of FICPI-India considered the content and the implications of such impromptu notices and were of the opinion that the said notices not only put undue burden on the applicants but also could compromise the quality of examination as well as granted patents....Read More

Indian patent practice and jurisprudence with respect to biological materials (including antibodies) is relatively new and thus not well-settled and/or uniform, unlike in the USA or Europe. In these circumstances, presenting a concrete picture re patenting of monoclonal antibodies in India is not feasible at this stage. Notwithstanding this constraint, this analysis presents various techno-legal...Read More