Foreign filing license – Some issues
By Dipan Banerjee and Ankur Garg
If a person wishes to file a patent application in foreign countries, he has to obtain a written permission, referred to as a Foreign Filing Licence, from the Controller as per Section 39(1) of the Patents Act, 1970. A request for FFL must be made in Form 25 and be accompanied by a brief description of the invention. The Controller may grant he FFL, if the central government opines that the invention is not relevant for defence purposes or atomic energy. It may be noted that Controller’s such conclusion shall be based on a consideration of the provisional or complete specification filed along with the patent application, and not on consideration of the brief description of the invention filed with a request for FFL. Further, in case the FFL is rejected, the Controller mostly imposes a secrecy direction on the invention. The question remains as to whether he can impose secrecy directions while issuing an order rejecting an FFL based on the brief description of the invention filed with the FFL request? The article in this issue of IPR Amicus also discusses various remedies in case of rejection of FFL – both when secrecy direction is imposed and when the same is not imposed...
Ratio decidendi
- Territorial jurisdiction of court - Trademark Section 134 and Copyright Section 62 are not in exclusion to Section 20 of CPC - Delhi High Court
- Maggi, a well- known trademark, to be protected for kitchen/household products – Delhi High Court
- Trademark in combination of commonly used parts – Delhi High Court
- Trademark - Delay in moving court for infringement not fatal – Delhi High Court
- IPAB can hear copyright matter in absence of Member Copyright – Delhi High Court
News Nuggets
- Posting copyrighted photo from freely accessible website, on another site – Court of Justice of European Union
- Trademark when cannot be indicative of geographical origin of goods/service - Court of Justice of European Union
- Interim relief denied against use of words DON’T BE A BAKRA in advertisement – Delhi High Court
- Trademark infringement - Bombay HC imposes exemplary costs
- Visual, phonetic and conceptual similarity in ‘Seven’ and ‘Sevenfriday’
October, 2018/Issue-85