Supreme Court of India on Patent Law

Product patent is something new to India. While we had process patent for nearly a century the product patent has been introduced hardly a decade age. In a recent case by Novratis AG, the Supreme Court of India refused to follow the line of reasoning adopted by American Courts on the subject in following words:

  • “We would like to say that in this country the law of patent, after the introduction of product patent for all kinds of substances in the patent regime, is in its infancy. We certainly do not wish the law of patent in this country to develop on lines where there may be a vast gap between the coverage and the disclosure under the patent; where the scope of the patent is determined not on the intrinsic worth of the invention but by the artful drafting of its claims by skilful lawyers, and where patents are traded as a commodity not for production and marketing of the patented products but to search for someone who may be sued for infringement of the patent.”
    (emphasis in italics added)

A very bold but at the same time scathing remark on the prevailing judicial interpretation in other parts of world. Supreme Court of USA is presently groping with a case relating to patent of part of human genome claiming the research is an invention and not a discovery. We wonder if its attention shall be drawn to harsh realities as observed by Supreme Court of India and quoted above.
Read more about Novratis case here.