“Aghast at the order”: Delhi High Court slams Assistant Controller of Patents for "cut and paste" job in patent rejection order

The Delhi High Court recently took a dim view of an order passed by the Assistant Controller of Patents while rejecting a patent application [Dolby International Lab v Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs]..Justice C Hari Shankar while hearing an appeal against the order which rejected a patent application, stated that it was most unsatisfactorily drawn up, to say the least, and it was hardly possible to treat it as written or drafted. “This Court is, frankly, aghast at the manner in which the impugned order has been passed,” said the single-judge. .The Court went on to reproduce the entire order being challenged and scrutinise it paragraph-by-paragraph before concluding that there was only a single sentence in the ten-page order which could be likened to any kind of reasoning. “The Assistant Controller appears to be thoroughly confused both as to the nature of the claim for which the application was made as well as objections raised in the FER and in the notice of hearing… In fact, the impugned order reflects that parts – often incomplete – of various documents have been randomly cut and pasted together, leaving the reader of the order to divine, for himself, the reason why,” the High Court said..Justice Shankar observed that such “cut-and-paste orders” do little justice to the solemn functions entrusted to the officers in the office of the Controller of Patents and Designs. .Further, the Court said that solely because of the arbitrary manner of passing the order, the Court was not in a position to examine it on merits.“It would well for the officers in the office of the Controller of Patents and Designs, who are discharging such functions, to bear in mind the fact that grant or rejection of a patent is a serious matter.. Orders refusing applications for grant of a patent cannot be mechanically passed, as has been done in the present case,” the Court underscored..With these stinging observations, the order was quashed and set aside. .The matter was then remanded to the Controller of Patents for reconsideration. It was also clarified that the matter would not be decided by the same officer and the reconsideration was directed to be completed within two months. The judge reiterated that the fresh consideration would proceed completely uninfluenced by the earlier order. .Advocates Vindhya S Mani and Gursimran Singh Narula appeared for the appellants, while Central Government Standing Counsel Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar along with Advocates Srish Kumar Mishra, Sagar Mehlawat and Alexander Mathai Paikaday represented the Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs. .[Read Order]