Author: admin

ISSUE:

Whether any amendment to a patent application that narrowed a patent claim to comply with the Patent Act, creates an absolute bar to equivalents for the particular claim limitation that was narrowed by the amendment?

RULE:

The narrowing of an amendment to satisfy any requirement of the Patent Act may result in estoppels. However, estoppel does not prevent the Patentee from claiming infringement against any equivalent to the narrowed element.

ISSUE:

Whether a patentee has an automatic right to a permanent injunction once infringement is found?

RULE:

The four-factor test was laid down: (i) the plaintiff has suffered irreparable injury (ii) remedies available at law are inadequate to compensate that injury; (iii) considering the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, a remedy in equity is warranted; (iv) the public interest would not be disserved by an injunction.

Upon the finding of a patent infringement, an injunction should not be awarded automatically, nor should one be denied merely because the Plaintiff does not use the claimed invention.

ISSUE:

Whether there exists a bar to the patentability of a process of manufacturing when the process consists of a living organism?

Whether such processes qualify under Section 2 and Section 5 of the Patent Act 1970?

RULE:

The Vendibility Test is a technique in order to measure the patentability of an invention. The test measures to what extent and how the process of the claimed invention leads to improvement, preservation, or restoration of the product, and if the product in the due time of the manufacturing process serves any of those purposes, the test is passed through.

ISSUE:

Whether the Respondents’ living micro-organism constitute as a “manufacture” or “composition of matter” within the meaning of § 101 of Title 35 United States Code?

RULE:

35 U.S.C. 101 requires that whoever invents or discovers an eligible invention must have it patented and must be granted only one patent for the same. This prevents unnecessary patenting of inventions thereafter.

ISSUE:

Do patentable claims become invalid because they include mathematical formulas?

RULE:

The ability to regulate a physical process through the use of a computer programme does not prevent the invention from being patented as a whole.

The abstract mathematical concepts could not be patented, but it held that the mere presence of a software element did not make an otherwise patent-eligible machine or process patent ineligible.