India: A new era of IP litigation in India

There is no study and support from legal commentators to recommend centralised courts for patent disputes in India.

When IPAB was abolished on April 4, 2021, it created a peculiar situation for all the high courts that would now be dealing with the cases transferred from it. The Delhi High Court (DHC) took the proactive step of creating a special IP division, and a roster of five judges from the Commercial division of the DHC was assigned to it.

High courts in Bombay, Madras, Kolkata and Ahmedabad have not yet taken such procedural steps to receive the appeal cases. This raises the question of what the inventors appealing to these courts will face in the future. We may expect high courts will have different setups or even different rules.

New rules

The IP division of the DHC will now act as the trial court and appellate court with the power to review cases on appeal and to reverse the decisions of origination from the implementation of patent, designs, trademarks, and geographical indications, and other laws dealt with by IPAB in India.

Newly nominated judges who have been assigned the work of the Delhi IP division have a deep understanding of IP rights law and practice in India. We believe that with the vast experience of these judges in handling volumes of IP dispute cases, they would be kept on the roster continuously for a few years. Such an arrangement would be essential for developing deeper expertise and resources at DHC on resolving contentious IP cases.

We consider the creation of the IP division as an improvement over the existing arrangement on the resolution of IP rights disputes in the routine commercial courts. However, we also know that IPAB was a specialised forum comprising technical members adept and experienced to adjudicate on questions of fact/technologies forming core issues in appeals arising from the decisions of patent controllers or in proceedings related to revocation of patents.