The readers of Spicy IP, who have been following the developments in the matter of F. Hoffmann La Roche Ltd. v. Cipla Ltd. (reported earlier here, here and here) , may be interested to know that the Single Judge Bench of the Delhi High Court has at last pronounced his verdict in this case. As per preliminary reports received, Roche’s patent of Erlotinib has been declared to be a valid one, while Cipla has been acquitted of the charge of having violated Roche’s patent, which essentially means that both the suit and the counter-claim have been dismissed. As soon as a copy of the original judgment is available, the Spicy IP team shall provide an appropriate analysis of the entire order as a whole. Till then, we’d request our regular readers to kindly bear with us through what appears to be one of the turning points of yet another high-profile patent litigation.
About The Author
Shouvik Kumar Guha
Shouvik is at present employed as a Research Associate and a Teaching Assistant at The W.B. National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He has obtained his B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) degree from NUJS itself and is also currently pursuing his LL.M. degree from the same university. From his very year at law school, he had been attracted towards the discipline of Intellectual Property and that interest has been kindled further in course of time. The interface between IP and other disciplines such as Economics, Anti-trust Law, Human Rights, World Trade Law and the technological developments relating thereto, has especially caught his attention since then. He’s authored several papers on issues relating to IP and other legal disciplines for journals, books, magazines and conferences in national as well as international levels. He is also currently co-heading an organization called Lexbiosis, which is an endeavor meant to facilitate the collaboration between the legal industry and academia.
Let’s see if Prashant Reddy can come up with the analysis considering it would be a longish judgment.
Hi Anon,
I used to be one of the counsels in the case, a few years ago, so I would rather not analyze this judgment. We have several other bloggers who are more than up to the task.
Cheers,
Prashant
By reading few news headlines, the Delhi High Court came to the conclusion that Roche’s patent is valid but not infringed by Cipla.
It seems to be that the Delhi High Court validated 2009 Justice Muralidhar ridiculous and technically flawed judgment that polymorph can circumvent drug compound (per se) patent. If this same reasoning is used to conclude non-infringement then I pity about sorry state of affairs our judiciary is in patent matters.
Indian “patents” are now becoming useless and judiciary is more or less like UPA government – paralyzed in thought process.
Varun: Could you please provide a reference to the 2009 judgment you are referring to? I think I missed following this case.
Hey Kshitij it seems to be I erred writing 2009 instead of 2008.
Actually Varun, there was a judgment in 2009: http://lobis.nic.in/dhc/SMD/judgement/25-04-2009/SMD24042009FAOOS1882008.pdf
Thanks Prashant. I too was referring to same judgment but was confused with the year of judgment.