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Law of Patents
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LLM · Group 3 Law of Intellectual Property and Information Technology
2024 Examination
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LLM Group 3 Law of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law of Patents 2024 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 13 September 2026.
Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2024 examination.
The law in these answers is stated as at September 2026, and four things date every textbook on this subject. THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY APPELLATE BOARD NO LONGER EXISTS: the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 omitted sections 116, 117, 117B, 117C and 117D of the Patents Act and substituted HIGH COURT for Appellate Board in section 117A, so appeals from the Controller and revocation petitions under section 64 now lie to the High Court, which is why the Delhi High Court framed its Intellectual Property Rights Division Rules in 2022. THE PENAL CHAPTER HAS BEEN CUT DOWN TWICE: the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 took effect for this Act on 1 August 2024 and turned sections 120, 122(1), 122(2) and 123 into PENALTIES imposed by an adjudicating officer under a new section 124A with an appeal under section 124B, omitting section 121 altogether; and the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2026, passed on 2 April 2026, took effect for this Act on 1 JUNE 2026, OMITTING SECTION 119 on falsification of the register in its entirety and adding a proviso to section 118 which, in the case of a contravention of section 39 only, disapplies it where in the opinion of the Central Government the invention was not relevant for defence purpose or atomic energy, so that section 118 is now the ONLY substantive criminal offence left in the Patents Act. THERE IS NO PATENT AMENDMENT ACT OF 2016, although one paper in this folder asks for its crucial features: the last amending Act is the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005, and 2016 produced the Patents (Amendment) Rules, which introduced expedited examination and the startup category. AND THE RULES HAVE MOVED AGAIN: the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2024, in force 15 March 2024, cut the time for requesting examination from forty eight months to thirty one, made the Form 27 statement of working triennial instead of annual, and codified the divisional application practice settled by the Division Bench in Syngenta Limited v. Controller of Patents and Designs on 13 October 2023.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2024 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2024 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
1.Discuss the History of Indian Patent System.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: a history question is best answered as a sequence of PERIODS, each defined by the question the law was trying to answer, rather than as a list of statutes. There are five: the colonial grants, the consolidation of 1911, the self-reliance settlement of 1970, the TRIPS decade, and the present period of administrative reform. Give the dates and the statutes within that frame, and add the two committees, because the Indian system is unusually well documented in its own preparatory reports.
Period one: the colonial grants, 1856 to 1911
ACT VI OF 1856, the first Indian patent statute, modelled on the English Act of 1852. It granted EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES to inventors for FOURTEEN YEARS on the filing of a specification. It was enacted without the assent of the Crown and was repealed the following year for that reason.
ACT XV OF 1859 restored the system, again for fourteen years, and confined the privilege to NEW MANUFACTURES. It introduced the requirement of filing a specification and the concept of prior publication defeating a grant.
Three consolidating statutes followed: the PATTERNS AND DESIGNS PROTECTION ACT, 1872, the PROTECTION OF INVENTIONS ACT, 1883, which gave temporary protection to inventions exhibited at exhibitions and is the ancestor of section 31, and the INVENTIONS AND DESIGNS ACT, 1888.
The question all of these answered was simple: how to extend to India the privileges the English law gave, without building an administration.
Period two: consolidation, 1911 to 1970
THE INDIAN PATENTS AND DESIGNS ACT, 1911 replaced the lot. It was modelled on the British Act of 1907 and it did what none of its predecessors had done: it created a CONTROLLER OF PATENTS and a patent administration with examination and opposition. It granted PRODUCT PATENTS IN ALL FIELDS, medicines included, and it governed India for SIXTY ONE YEARS, longer than any Indian intellectual property statute before or since.
The question it answered was administrative: how to run a patent system rather than merely to authorise grants.
Period three: the self-reliance settlement, 1970 to 1995
THE TWO COMMITTEES. After independence the Government appointed the TEK CHAND COMMITTEE in 1949, which reported that the patent system had not stimulated invention in India, that foreign proprietors held the great majority of Indian patents, and that they were being used to SUPPRESS LOCAL MANUFACTURE and to secure imports at high prices. The Patents Bill of 1953 lapsed. The Government then appointed JUSTICE N. RAJAGOPALA AYYANGAR, whose REPORT ON THE REVISION OF THE PATENTS LAW of 1959 is the founding document of modern Indian patent policy. He recommended that patents for FOOD, MEDICINE, DRUGS and substances produced by CHEMICAL PROCESSES be confined to PROCESSES ONLY, and that the term be short.
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970, in force 20 APRIL 1972, enacted those recommendations. SECTION 5 allowed only PROCESS CLAIMS in those fields. Terms were short, compulsory licensing was extensive, and licences of right were available. The Designs provisions were left behind in the 1911 Act, where they stayed until the Designs Act, 2000.
What the 1970 Act actually did to the monopoly. Three devices, and they are worth naming because they show how far the settlement went. The TERM for a process patent in food, medicine or drugs was FIVE YEARS FROM SEALING OR SEVEN FROM FILING, whichever was shorter, against fourteen years for everything else. Every patent in those fields was DEEMED ENDORSED WITH THE WORDS LICENCES OF RIGHT after three years, so that any person could demand a licence as of right on terms settled by the Controller. And the compulsory licensing chapter was available besides. A patent in medicine after 1970 was therefore short, narrow and freely licensable, which is another way of saying that it was barely a monopoly at all.
The question this period answered was economic: whether a developing country should grant monopolies over medicines. India's answer was no, and the consequence was an Indian generic pharmaceutical industry that now supplies a large share of the world's medicines by volume.
Period four: the TRIPS decade, 1995 to 2005
India became a founder member of the World Trade Organization on 1 JANUARY 1995, and ARTICLE 27 of TRIPS required patents in ALL FIELDS OF TECHNOLOGY and ARTICLE 33 a term of TWENTY YEARS. India took every transition period the Agreement allowed and amended in three stages.
THE PATENTS (AMENDMENT) ACT, 1999, retrospective to 1 JANUARY 1995, created the MAILBOX under section 5(2) to receive product patent applications that could not yet be granted, with EXCLUSIVE MARKETING RIGHTS in the interim.
THE PATENTS (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2002 raised the term to TWENTY YEARS FROM FILING in section 53, inserted the statement of general principles in SECTION 83, added the reversed burden of proof for process patents in section 104A, and created the appellate jurisdiction of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board.
THE PATENTS (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2005 omitted section 5 and introduced PRODUCT PATENTS from 1 JANUARY 2005, while strengthening SECTION 3(d), restructuring opposition into the pre-grant and post-grant scheme of section 25, and protecting pre-2005 generic investment in section 11A(7).
The question of this period was how much of the 1970 settlement could be preserved inside the new obligations. The answer was section 3(d), the compulsory licensing chapter and a strict disclosure requirement, and all three have been tested since.
Period five: the courts and the administration, 2005 to the present
THE COURTS. Novartis AG v. Union of India, (2013) 6 SCC 1, upheld section 3(d), holding that EFFICACY in the pharmaceutical field means THERAPEUTIC EFFICACY and that the section is a SECOND TIER of qualifying standards. Bayer Corporation v. Union of India, Bombay High Court, 15 July 2014, upheld India's first and only COMPULSORY LICENCE. Ferid Allani v. Union of India, 2019 SCC OnLine Del 11867, read section 3(k) as barring only a computer programme PER SE and requiring a TECHNICAL EFFECT. Monsanto Technology LLC v. Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd, (2019) 3 SCC 381, held that patentability under section 3(j) cannot be decided summarily. And the older foundation remains Bishwanath Prasad Radhey Shyam v. Hindustan Metal Industries, (1979) 2 SCC 511, on obviousness and on the disclosure bargain.
THE FORUM. The Intellectual Property Appellate Board took over patent appeals on 2 April 2007 and was ABOLISHED by the TRIBUNALS REFORMS ACT, 2021, which omitted sections 116, 117, 117B, 117C and 117D and substituted HIGH COURT for Appellate Board in section 117A. The Delhi High Court created an INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DIVISION and framed rules for it in 2022, and the Madras High Court followed. The appellate forum has therefore returned to where it was before 2007.
THE ADMINISTRATION. The PATENTS (AMENDMENT) RULES, 2016, in force 16 MAY 2016, introduced EXPEDITED EXAMINATION under rule 24C, created the STARTUP category and cut the period for putting an application in order from twelve months to SIX. The PATENTS (AMENDMENT) RULES, 2024, in force 15 MARCH 2024, cut the REQUEST FOR EXAMINATION period from FORTY EIGHT to THIRTY ONE MONTHS, made the FORM 27 statement of working TRIENNIAL, relaxed the section 8 obligation, inserted rule 13(2A) on DIVISIONAL applications and introduced a CERTIFICATE OF INVENTORSHIP.
THE OFFENCES. The JAN VISHWAS (AMENDMENT OF PROVISIONS) ACT, 2023, in force for this Act on 1 AUGUST 2024, DECRIMINALISED sections 120, 122(1) and 123 and omitted section 121, replacing fines and imprisonment with PENALTIES imposed by an ADJUDICATING OFFICER under the new section 124A.
AND THERE IS A SECOND ONE. The JAN VISHWAS (AMENDMENT OF PROVISIONS) ACT, 2026, passed on 2 APRIL 2026, OMITTED SECTION 119 ALTOGETHER and added an exemption to section 118, with effect from 1 JUNE 2026. This answer states the law as it now stands. A candidate who sat this paper in 2024 would have written section 119 as a live offence, and would have been right at the time.
What the history explains about the present Act
A good history answer ends by showing that the past is still in the statute. Five provisions are unintelligible without it.
SECTION 83 reads like a preamble and is not one. Its declarations, that patents are granted to secure that inventions are WORKED IN INDIA and NOT to enable a MONOPOLY OF IMPORTATION, are the Ayyangar position preserved in the 2002 amendment and now used to construe the compulsory licensing chapter.
SECTION 3(d) exists because 2005 obliged India to grant product patents on medicines and she wished to grant as few of them as the Agreement permitted. It is the surviving fragment of section 5.
SECTION 11A(7) protects generic manufacturers who had invested before 1 January 2005 in a drug that was then sitting in the mailbox, and it can only be understood as a transitional bridge between the two regimes.
SECTION 84's three year wait and SECTION 85's further two years are drafted to ARTICLE 5A of the Paris Convention, which India acceded to only on 7 DECEMBER 1998, more than a century after the Convention was made.
And the 1912 date in SECTION 13 AND SECTION 29, which treats a specification filed in India before 1 January 1912 as not anticipating, is a direct reference to the commencement of the Indian Patents and Designs Act, 1911. A statute of 1970 still carries the joint of 1911 inside it.
Conclusion. The Indian patent system began with ACT VI OF 1856 and ACT XV OF 1859, colonial grants of EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES for fourteen years, consolidated through the statutes of 1872, 1883 and 1888. The INDIAN PATENTS AND DESIGNS ACT, 1911 built the administration, created the Controller and granted product patents in all fields for SIXTY ONE YEARS. The TEK CHAND COMMITTEE of 1949 and the AYYANGAR REPORT of 1959 produced the PATENTS ACT, 1970, in force 20 APRIL 1972, whose SECTION 5 confined food, medicine, drugs and chemicals to PROCESS PATENTS and built the Indian generic industry. TRIPS then compelled three amendments, in 1999 for the MAILBOX retrospective to 1 January 1995, in 2002 for the TWENTY YEAR TERM and section 83, and in 2005 for PRODUCT PATENTS from 1 JANUARY 2005 with SECTION 3(d) as the safeguard. Since 2005 the system has been shaped by the courts, above all Novartis AG v. Union of India and Bayer Corporation v. Union of India, by the abolition of the Appellate Board in 2021, by the Rules of 2016 and 2024, and by the decriminalisation of the offences on 1 AUGUST 2024.
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