Delhi High Court expresses displeasure at cut-paste orders passed by patents office; orders official to undergo training

The Delhi High Court recently ordered an Assistant Controller General of Patents (ACGP), Ashlesh Maurya to undergo a course on writing judicial orders noting that the order passed by him is a total mockery of the functions vested in the quasi-judicial authority..Justice C Hari Shankar passed the order after noting that the order passed by Maurya amounted to a total mockery of the functions vested in the quasi-judicial authority.The High Court said that it was seriously disturbed at the order passed by the officer and that this was the fourth case which has come to court where the officer at the patents’ office had passed such an order.“To the knowledge of this Bench, this is the fourth case where such an order has come up before this Court. If the passing of such orders persists, the Court may be constrained to take more drastic steps, which might in the end result impact the officer who passes the order personally,” the Court cautioned..Justice Hari Shankar passed the order while dealing with a case filed by Synthes GMBH challenging an order of the ACGP refusing their application for grant of patent in respect of ‘bone fixation apparatus’..After examining the order, the bench noted that instead of taking the trouble of typing out the order, the ACGP has merely cut and pasted paragraphs from documents.“Though such cutting and pasting is itself disquieting, the Court would not have taken serious note thereof, had the ACGP condescended to supplement the cut and pasted paragraphs with his own reasoning, displaying some minimal application of mind. Sadly, that is lacking.”The Court also noted that the application for grant of patent in the present case was filed in 2007 and 16 years have passed since then.“If inventors, who seek to invent patents, are going to suffer such treatment, it would ultimately disincentivise persons from exercising their inventive faculties and coming with new and innovative technologies which would ultimately be deleterious to the national interest as well.”Finally, the court set aside the order of the ACGP and ordered that the fresh proceedings shall be concluded within three months..Of the four cut-paste orders mentioned by the Court, one rejected a patent application by Dolby International AB, while the other rejected a patent application by BlackBerry Limited. Both of these rejections were set aside by the Court on the grounds that they lacked reasoning.In the case of Dolby, Justice C Hari Shankar had observed,“This Court is, frankly, aghast at the manner in which the impugned order has been passed” .Justice Sanjeev Narula, in Blackberry's case, emphasized that without proper reasoning in the Assistant Controller's orders, it may be difficult for the applicant to identify the grounds for appeal..Advocates Vineet Rohilla, Rohit Rangi, Debashish Banerjee, Ankush Verma, Tanveer Malhotra and Venkatesh Nair appeared for Synthes GMBH.Controller General of Patents was represented through Central Government Standing Counsel Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar and advocates Srish Kumar Mishra, Sagar Mehlawat and Alexander Mathai Paikaday. .[Read Order]