( After getting caught on the wrong foot ...)Patents: Appellate Board Becomes Functional,Health

After getting caught on the wrong foot in the Novartis case, the government of India is moving fast to plug all loopholes in patent law// implementation.

It has now been notified that all patent litigations filed in various courts in the country after notification of the amended Patent Act have been transferred to the Intellectual Property Appellate Board, set up at Chennai.

Several pharmaceutical companies have filed cases in High Courts and lower courts in different states challenging the decisions of the Patent Controller in granting or denying patents since 2005. According to an estimate, there are about 20 patent related cases to be decided in various courts.

Only on April 2 the government issued the notification on declaring that the provision in the Patents (Amendment) Act (Section 117G), which provides that all pending appeals in the High Courts shall be transferred to the Appellate Board set up under the Act.

The Board has a three-member team headed by S. Chandrasekaran who has been the Controller General of Patents, Design and Trademarks.

He assumed the charge of the post of Technical Member (Patents), IPAB, Chennai on April 2 itself. With the appointment of Technical Member (Patents), the Board now stands operationalised.

The IPAB is now fully functional for hearing the appeals against the orders of the Registrar of Trade Marks, Geographical Indications as well as the Controller of Patents.

It may be recalled that the pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG went before the High Court seeking reversal of the Chennai-based Controller’s rejection of its patent application for its anti-cancer drug Glivec in January 2006.

As per the Indian patent laws, appeals against rejection of a patent application should first go before the Appellate Board set up for the purpose.

But as the case was being heard out in the Madras High Court, it was revealed for nearly
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