“A Bench of Justice S. H. Kapadia and Justice B. Sudershan Reddy passed this order disposing of a special leave petition filed by Bajaj Auto Ltd. against an interim order passed by a Division Bench of the Madras High Court suspending a single judge’s interim direction restraining TVS Motor from booking orders for `Flame’.
In its brief order, the Bench said “we are of the view that the Division Bench should not have interfered with the single judge’s order at the ad interim stage. We express no opinion on merits. No further bookings to be made from today till January 29.” The Bench, after hearing senior counsel C. A. Sundaram for Bajaj Auto and senior counsel K. Parasaran for TVS Motor, said that TVS Motor could execute the bookings already made. The Bench asked the parties to complete the pleadings in five days and directed the single judge to put up the case for hearing on January 29.
Initially on a suit filed by Bajaj Auto alleging that TVS Motor had infringed its patent rights by copying key features of its patented technology, a single judge had directed maintenance of `status quo’ on bookings for the new bike. However, on appeal from TVS Motor, a Division Bench had stayed the single judge’s order. The present SLP by Bajaj Auto is directed against this interim order. In its SLP, Bajaj Auto assailed the High Court’s interim order stating that it had obtained a patent titled `An Improved Internal Combustion Engine Working on Four Stroke Principle’ in July 2002.”
For those interested in more insights into this case, see this excellent article by Manisha Singh Nair.
This year is turning out to be a great one for IP Litigation! And not just of the kind that is limited to the trial and High Courts. A fair number are making it to the Supreme Court too. The Supreme Court recently issued its judgment on the “copyrightability” of court judgments compiled in case reports. We will be reviewing this soon.
finally non pharma patents
are taking centre stage, which they duly desrve.to anyone following the
this case closely, the tech deatils given by manisha’s article are more or less known. one argument given in her article that “Some legal experts have opined that absence of any opposition to the granting of the patent to Bajaj may become a deterrent and difficult for TVS Motors to get the patent revoked” sounds very frightfull and weird to me.this case will be a goodcase law regarding inventive step(i believe
it to be a ground for revocation) .
Dear Ravi,
You’re absolutely right. People tend to forget that there are plenty of other technology areas in which there are patents–and we cannot base our patent policy on pharma alone.
Also, I agree with you. Manisha’s comment that the lack of an opposition will somehow make it extremely difficult to revoke is not entirely accurate.
I think Manisha wants to say that TVS had the option of filing opposition but they did not do it. Therefore in this scenario apart from the overlapping of technical details, if any, acquiesceing to the fact of grant of patent inspite of being aware about its character being of belonging to public domain may bring in some deterrrence in the revocation suit.
It is evidently clear that there is no lack of opposition as such