Orders Passed By Adjudicating Authority Without Dealing With Submissions Suffer From Manifest Non-Application Of Mind: Delhi HC

The High Court held so while considering an appeal filed under Section 117A of the Patents Act, 1970 which had challenged the order passed by the Deputy Controller of Patents and Designs seven years back, whereby a Patent Application filed by the appellant for grant of a patent in respect of an invention titled "Minimizing feedback by sending a quality indicator for a non-restrictive reuse set and a vectored quality indicator for other reuse sets” stood rejected.

A Single Judge Bench of Justice C Hari Shankar observed that “Orders such as that impugned in the present appeal reduce the exercise of the examination of the patent application, raising of objections thereto, and grant of an opportunity to the applicant to respond to the objects, to an empty paper formality”.

Advocate Vineet Rohilla appeared for the Appellant, whereas CGSC Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar appeared for the Respondent.

After considering the submission, the Bench found that the impugned order acknowledges the fact that responses to the objections raised by the Patent Office were submitted by the appellant on Dec 19, 2012, and during a hearing granted on Dec 03, 2014.

However, the Bench found that the order neither made any reference to the contents of the submissions, nor there was any finding on the merits either.

While the Deputy Controller, in the penultimate paragraph of the impugned order, notes his "entire agreement" with the findings of the Examiner providing no reasons therefore, the Bench stated that there was no observation, much less any finding, on the response submitted by the appellant.

“The counsel for the appellant submits that the claim relating to "data transmission in a wireless multiple access communication system", to which the afore-extracted passage eludes was withdrawn by the appellant while amending his claims and that the Deputy Controller, instead of addressing the claim which survived, has returned a finding on the claim which already stood withdrawn”, added the Bench.

Noting that the counsel for the respondent agreed that the impugned order is set aside and the matter is remanded to the patent office for de-novo adjudication under law as well as the provisions of the Patents Act and the Patent Rules and after affording an opportunity of hearing to the appellant, the High Court quashed the order and directed the adjudicating officer to decide on the application as expeditiously as possible and positively within two months.