Monday, March 19, 2018

Obhan on Injunctions and the Public Interest in India

Recently I published a post on Ashish Bharadwaj's article Patent Injunction and the Public Interest in India, 40 EIPR 55-58 (2018), discussing the author's reservations about the Delhi High Court's ruling last year in Bayer Intellectual Property GmbH v Ajanta Pharma Ltd that a "public interest" factor weighing against the granting of an interim injunction is the potential loss of employment or tax revenue if the injunction were to issue.  Similarly critical of the decision is Essenese Obhan's recent article Is Not-Working of a Patent in India Against Public Interest?, Mitteilungen der deutschen Patentanwälten, Feb. 2018, pp. 59-60.  Here is the abstract:
Not working a patent in India can affect a patentee's right to obtain interim relief in a patent litigation.  Recent court decisions in India involving Bayer's patents on Vardenafil consider whether not working a patent is also against public interest, and if so, would non-working of the patent by a patentee in India enable a defendant to manufacture and export a patented article outside India.
The author notes that a subsequent decision of the same court involving the same patents appears to disagree with the earlier decision's conclusion that courts should take into account loss of employment and loss of state revenue. 

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