In-depth analytical articles on Indian patent law including prosecution,enforcement, statutory interpretation and case developments.
Among the most practically significant yet doctrinally complex provisions of the Patents Act, 1970 is Section 107A, inserted into the Act by the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2002. In the two decades since its insertion, Section 107A has become one of the most contested and commercially consequential provisions in Indian pharmaceutical patent law, engaging questions that
Few obligations in Indian patent law are as frequently misunderstood, as consistently neglected and as consequential in their implications as the requirement to work a patent in India. The Patents Act, 1970 does not treat the grant of a patent as the end of the patentee’s obligations to the public it treats it as the
Working of Patents in India – Section 83, Form 27 and Consequences Read More »
India’s accession to the Patent Cooperation Treaty on December 7, 1998, fundamentally transformed the landscape for both inbound and outbound patent filings. For Indian applicants seeking protection across multiple jurisdictions, the PCT provides a single-window mechanism of unmatched procedural efficiency. For foreign applicants targeting the Indian marketone of the world’s most consequential pharmaceutical, technology and
If the specification is the heart of a patent application, the claims are its spine. Every structural decision in the specification how the invention is described, what embodiments are disclosed, which prior art is distinguished ultimately serves the claims, because it is the claims alone that define the legal boundary of the monopoly that the
Claim Drafting for Indian Patents – Types, Scope and Strategy Read More »
The specification is the heart of a patent application. Every other element of the application the claims, the abstract, the drawings derives its meaning and its legal validity from the specification and the quality of the specification determines, more than any other single factor, both the prospect of grant and the value of the patent
Specification Writing in Indian Patent Practice – Complete and Provisional Read More »
Few provisions in the entire canon of global intellectual property law have attracted as much sustained attention, controversy and scholarly debate as Section 3(d) of the Patents Act, 1970. In the two decades since India inserted this provision into its patent statute as part of the 2005 amendment that brought the country into compliance with
Section 3(d) and the Evergreening Debate in Indian Pharma Patents Read More »
Among the three foundational criteria that a patent applicant must satisfy to obtain a grant novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability industrial applicability is perhaps the least litigated and the least theoretically contested, yet it performs an indispensable function in defining the outer boundary of the patent system’s reach. It is the criterion that ensures
Industrial Applicability as a Patentability Criterion under the Patents Act, 1970 Read More »
A patent, once granted, is not inviolable. The Patents Act, 1970 recognizes that the grant of a patent is an administrative act performed on the basis of an examination that, however thorough, may not always capture every deficiency in an application whether a failure of novelty, an insufficient disclosure, a statutory exclusion that was not
Revocation of Patents under Section 64 – Grounds and Procedure Read More »
The journey of a patent application in India does not end with filing. In many respects, it begins in earnest only when the Indian Patent Office issues what is formally known as the First Examination Report – the FER. For applicants who are new to the Indian patent system, the FER can appear daunting: a
Understanding the First Examination Report (FER) and How to Respond Read More »
The grant of a patent is not an automatic entitlement that follows from novelty or inventive step alone. Before any invention can be examined on those standard criteria, it must first clear a foundational threshold: it must constitute a patentable subject matter under Indian law. The Patents Act, 1970 draws this threshold with deliberate precision
Non-Patentable Subject Matter in India: A Complete Guide to Section 3 Read More »