In Rich Products Corporation v. The Controller of Patents (dt. May 1, 2024), a division bench of the Delhi High Court has killed two birds with one stone. Hearing an appeal against a Single Judge order refusing to entertain a writ petition against the Controller’s decision to reject a pre grant opposition, the Court stated that the petitioner (who had filed the pre-grant) should rather exhaust existing legal remedies under the Patents Act. The Court clarified that under the extraordinary writ jurisdiction under Article 226, it can intervene against the Controller’s decision rejecting a pre grant opposition, so long there is a “jurisdictional or manifest error” with the Controller’s finding, and that this was not present in the current case. In doing so the Court also streamlined the future course of action for the aggrieved opponent. The Court reiterated that the aggrieved pre grant opponent can still file a post grant opposition under Section 25 (2), and can further file an appeal against the Controller’s decision under Section 25(4) r/w Section 117A if required.
The order is clear and crisp, with the Court relying on some of the important precedents around the issue of whether a post grant opposition can be a suitable alternative remedy for an aggrieved pre grant opponent. One thing that still stands out here is that despite asserting that the Court can intervene under Article 226 only in the situation of “manifest or jurisdictional errors”, the Court has not quite explained what these errors are or what are the criteria for an error to be categorized as such. On this, a similar language is adopted by the Bombay High Court’s 2009 decision in Glochem Industries Ltd. v. Cadila Healthcare Ltd. & Ors. where the Court has elaborated the above phrase as “manifest or jurisdictional error while considering the representation by way of opposition or for that matter decided the objections on palpable misreading and misapplication of the relevant provisions of law.” An explanation on these terms from the Court is missing in the present case and instead the Court seems to have merely reproduced the above excerpt from the Bombay High Court decision. After this, the Court moved on to clarify that the powers under Article 226 are discretionary. Which means that the Court can determine when a situation falls under the category of “jurisdictional or manifest error” and in case it does not, then the petitioner would have to take the route of the alternate remedy under the statute.
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