Patent

Patent claims are the most important part of a patent application, for they define the invention for which the Patent Office has granted protection. Patent claims identify what the patent does and does not cover....

Recognising that startups can drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment, the Government of India’s ‘Startup India’ Initiative has sought to develop an ecosystem to strengthen such entities. This ecosystem includes policies that reduce regulatory burdens and provide various concessions that make ‘doing business’ easy....

Patents are a measure of innovation. A healthy patent portfolio of a company indicates that the company has invested significant time, money, and effort in research and development activities within the organization. It also indicates that the company is evolving and constantly striving to bring newer and better products or services into the market. However, patents need to be also looked at as business opportunities and should, ideally, align with the business strategies of the company. Owning a patent gives a company the legal right to commercially exploit its innovation and prevent competitors from imitating or replicating its innovation. Every innovative company, therefore, needs a good Patent Strategy to be successful in the long run....

The ethics of intellectual property has always been a highly debated issue, and spans a range of issues, not least around what kind of patentable subject matter can be regarded as ethically permissible. Jurisdictions, including India, try to tackle this issue by legislating for it in the laws, and excluding inventions that may be morally questionable, but such laws are inherently subjective, and open to interpretation. This note examines the questions that have arisen around inventions related to the tobacco industry in India in this context....

On April 22, 2020, the United States Patent and Trademarks Office (the “USPTO”) issued an order  refusing inventorship of a patent application to DABUS, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine. This decision, which broadly appears to align with the position being taken in Europe and the United Kingdom with regard to the same invention, is likely to have a significant impact on the future of patenting, at least until there are statutory amendments to the contrary, or until it gets overturned for any reason....

Today, as the global scientific and research community doubles down on finding a potential drug or vaccine against the novel Coronavirus, the obvious question that arises is of access to affordable drugs and medical equipment. With the high investment required in drug discovery and pharmaceutical research generally, the debate naturally turns to the returns on such investment in times of a public health crisis as the one being faced today. This note seeks to understand if intellectual property (IP) protection will be a barrier to affordable drugs....

The total cost for bringing a new prescription drug to market is about USD 2 to 3 billion (DiMasi et al.). A significant portion of this cost is incurred in conducting clinical trials. The global clinical trials market size is expected to reach USD 69.8 billion by 2027, exhibiting a 5.1% compound annual growth rate (‘CAGR’) during the forecast period. ...

An Indian court has held that in the absence of a patent, common law rights or agreements protecting know-how cannot be a means to circumvent the patent process. In its judgement in Prof. Dr. Claudio De Simone & Anr v. Actial Farmaceutica Srl. & Ors. (17.03.2020, Delhi High Court), a Single Judge dismissing a suit for permanent injunction said that the right to an injunction could only be invoked under Section 48 of the Patents Act, 1970, and no right exists in common law to restrain others from commercially exploiting the know-how of an invention. ...

On 16 January 2020, the European Patent Office (EPO) Board of Appeal revoked a patent related to CRISPR/Cas9 technology, and in doing so delivered one of the most anticipated decisions in the field of biotechnology patents in recent times. This gene-editing technology, which is the subject of a bitter battle for intellectual property rights between two rival parties - The Broad Institute and the University of California (UC), Berkeley, is revolutionizing research in biotechnology....