Delhi High Court’s Intellectual Property Division sees the return of Justice Prathiba M. Singh to the roster who will now take charge of the division, along with Justice C. Hari Shankar. In a notification dated June 26, 2023 (pdf), it is stated that the new roster will be operational from July 3, 2023, and the matters which will be heard by the IPD will be assigned by the Judge In-Charge (Original Side), Justice Yogesh Khanna.
The roster for the IPD was last revised almost 8 months back, in November 2022, whereby Justice C. Hari Shankar, Justice Sanjeev Narula, and Justice Amit Bansal were handed over the responsibility of the division. After the present revision, Justice Sanjeev Narula will sit along with Justice Satish Chandra Sharma, the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, in Division Bench-I, whereas, Justice Amit Bansal will take charge of the Single Bench (Criminal Jurisdiction).
The roster notification also clarifies that matters on the Commercial Division relating to IP, matters relating to Intellectual Property Rights, and IPR Suits of the years 2017 and 2018 which are pending on the board of Justice Amit Bansal will be transferred to Justice C. Hari Shankar, whereas, all IPR Suits of 2015, 2016, 2022 and 2023 on the board of Justice Bansal will be transferred to Justice Singh.
Regarding changes in the IP Appellate Division front, the division bench comprising Justice Yashwant Varma and Justice Dharmesh Sharma will continue to function as the Appellate Division.
The revision of the roster is for sure surprising as the strength of the IPD is down by one, to two judges. The recent IPD Annual Report 2022-23, clarified that initially, the IPD had two judges but this was later expanded to three, and perhaps rightly so considering the trend of increasing IP filings before the High Court. In WIPO’s Guide for Judges for Case Management and the Delhi High Court Annual Report, it was highlighted that the Delhi High Court IPD has approximately 4,000 pending IP cases, with a rising number of patent case filings. And while the division has disposed of a substantially large number of IP cases and appeals since its inception, one of the reasons for this feat would obviously be because of a higher number of dedicated judges to adjudicate on these disputes. Further putting some perspective, IP adjudication before the Delhi High Court involves CPC, the substantive IP law, the Delhi High Court Original Side Rules, 2018, Commercial Courts Act, 2015, and the IPD Rules and therefore to function as a member of this division is a no easy task.
With all these numbers and facts in play, reducing the number of judges can logically mean two contrasting things- either there is a reduction in the number of pending cases, or there are even higher backlogs in the other benches/ divisions of the court, considering that the Delhi High Court is operating at a strength of 47 against the sanctioned strength of 45 permanent and 15 additional judges. So what is it? If you have a take on it, feel free to drop a comment below.
Hat-tip to an anonymous reader and Priyam Cherian for sharing the notification with me.
Low / insignificant return is a problem but CSIR, IITs, IISC have freedom to license IP and they receive peanuts from Industry. Is it because they license on non-exclusive mode and mostly to MSMEs.
Hi Mr. Rao,
Thank you for the comment, but I think you have accidentally posted it in the wrong post. Regardless, I have shared your comment on the right post for you. Pasting the link of the post below :-
https://spicyip.com/2023/06/over-the-last-decade-india-has-spent-rs-100000-crores-on-scientific-research-with-no-transparency-time-to-resuscitate-the-pupfip.html