Simplicity in invention should not deter court from granting patent: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court recently held that simplicity in an invention should not deter courts from granting a patent. (Avery Dennison Corporation v. Controller of Patents & Designs).While allowing the grant of patent to a company, Justice Prathiba M Singh stated,"Some of the fundamental principles while analysing inventive step and whether an invention is obvious or not are:i. That simplicity does not defeat an invention - even simple inventions are patentable.ii. The inventive step has to be assessed on the basis of the date of priority of the subject patent and not after the publication of the same i.e., it is not permissible to do a hindsight analysis or an ex-post facto analysis.".The Court was hearing an appeal filed by a branding and information labeling solutions company called Avery Dennison Corporation seeking a direction to set aside an August 2021 decision passed by the Controller General of Patents and Designs.The Controller had refused the application for grant of patent titled 'Notched Fastener' filed on June 10, 2013, on the ground that the subject matter of the patent does not constitute an invention under Section 2(1)(j) of the Patents Act, 1970, which states that an invention must have an inventive step..While dealing with the question of whether the subject of the patent application lacked an inventive step, the Court observed,"One of the sure tests in analysing the existence of inventive step would also be the time gap between the prior art document and the invention under consideration."If a long time had passed since the prior art was published and a simple change resulted in unpredictable advantages which no one had thought of for a long time, it would then tilt in favour of holding that the invention is not obvious, the Court said.The Court noted that in this case, no other prior art was cited between the period 1992 till 2010 which dealt with fasteners in this manner."If the invention was so obvious, fasteners and fastener stock being products used in bulk in industries, any third party could have made the changes in the prior art to arrive at the subject invention – which obviously has not happened.".Applying the judicially recognised tests in such cases, the Court rejected the Controller’s finding that any person skilled in the art could make the variation and modifications to arrive at the invention."The differences which the Controller describes as `'superficial' may appear simple but clearly have an impact on the product concerned. The description of the said differences as superficial would, therefore, be misplaced," the Court added.This Court also noted the fact that corresponding patent applications in various jurisdictions were granted in the USA, Japan, South Korea and China. While directing that the patent be allowed to proceed for grant, the Court directed the matter to be listed before the patent office for completion of requisite formalities..Advocates Rohit Rangi and Vineet Rohilla appeared for the appellant company. Central Government Standing Counsel Harish V Shankar and Advocates Srish Kumar Mishra, Sagar Mehlawat and Alexander Mathai Paikaday appeared for the Union of India..[Read judgment]