Article
Anti-competitive practices in patent licenses – No overlap between powers of Patent Controller and the Competition Commission
By Ayushman Kheterpal
Article in June 2020 issue of IPR Amicus discusses elaborately the recent decision of the Delhi High Court in the case of Monsanto Holdings Pvt. Ltd. and Ors. v. Competition Commission of India and Ors. The Court while upheld the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) jurisdiction in matters concerning alleged anti-competitive practices for protection of the patent rights, it at the same time held that the domain of CCI and the Patent Controller are distinct and not in conflict. The Court also held that the exclusion under sub-section (5) of Section 3 of the Competition Act, 2002 does not give an unqualified right to the IPR holder to include onerous conditions under the guise of protecting its Intellectual Property Rights. According to the author, the interface between competition law and intellectual property laws is perennial and there are bound to be conflicts and overlap of powers of authorities established thereunder. The author feels that another issue that the Court could have examined to decide the jurisdiction of the Patent Controller, was interpretation of Section 69(3) of the Patents Act, 1970, particularly proviso of Section 69(3), read with Section 140 thereof...
Ratio decidendi
- Copyrights – Expression of a story – Abstraction process and similarity of central theme/concept – Bombay High Court
- Pharma trademark infringement – Likelihood of confusion – Importance of sale in India – Delhi High Court
- Plant variety protection – Suit for infringement not maintainable before registration – Delhi High Court
- Trademarks – No similarity between ‘TYPBAR-TCV’ and ‘ZYVAC-TCV’ – Delhi High Court
- Copyright in shape even when same is necessary to obtain a technical result, when available – Court of Justice of the European Union
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