India’s Finance Minister yesterday (23rd of July) presented Union Budget 2024 with many changes across sectors. The proposals relating to customs duties, as per the speech of the Finance Minister, intend to support domestic manufacturing, deepen local value addition, promote export competitiveness, and simplify taxation, while keeping the interest of the general public and consumers surmount.

In line with the recommendations of the 53rd GST Council Meeting held recently, the Central Government has, in the Union Budget 2024 presented today (23 July 2024), proposed a new Section 74A in the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 for the purpose of ‘Determination of tax not paid or short paid or erroneously refunded or input tax credit wrongly availed or utilised for any reason’. Refer clause 134 of the Finance (No. 2) Bill, 2024 for the purpose.

The Madras High Court has set aside the Order of the Assistant Controller of Patents rejecting the patent for ‘Associating Command Services with Multiple Active Components’. The Patent Office had rejected the patent alleging exclusion under Section 3(k) of the Patents Act, 1970 as constituting computer programme per se and not involving any inventive hardware. The finding of the Patent office that the invention lacked inventive step under Section 2(1)(ja) in view of certain prior arts, was also set aside by the High Court here. The applicant-appellant was represented by Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan Attorneys in this case.