High Court Orders Assistant Controller General Of Patents To Undergo Course On Passing Judicial Orders At Delhi Judicial Academy

The Delhi High Court has directed an Assistant Controller General Of Patents to undergo a course on passing judicial orders at the Delhi Judicial Academy as it was “seriously disturbed” about an order passed by the officer while rejecting an application for grant of patent.

Justice C Hari Shankar said that the order was nothing less than a “total mockery” of the functions which are vested in the quasi-judicial authorities in the office of the Controller General of Patents.

After a personal interaction with the Controller General of Patents, the court requested that the matter be assigned to another officer for fresh consideration.

“The learned Controller General of Patents is also requested to depute the officer who has passed the impugned order Mr. Ashlesh Mourya, ACGP to undergo a course in passing of judicial orders, to be conducted by the Delhi Judicial Academy,” the court ordered.

The court noted that instead of “taking the trouble of typing out the order”, the officer merely did cut and paste of the paragraphs from relevant documents. Observing that the order in question shocked the conscience of the court, Justice Shankar said:

“Though such cutting and pasting is itself disquieting, the Court would not have taken serious note thereof, had the ACGP condescended to supplement the cut and pasted paragraphs with his own reasoning, displaying some minimal application of mind.”

The court also requested the Controller General of Patents to advise the officers who are discharging quasi-judicial functions such as grant or refusal of patent applications. It added that an effort must be made to ensure that orders, as in the matter at hand, are not passed as they discredit not only to the duty vested in the officers but would also reflect on the functioning of the office of the Controller General of Patents itself.

“This Court has personally interacted with the learned Controller General of Patents, and is aware that he has his heart in the right place, and is sincerely interested in ensuring that the patent office functions properly. “The best laid schemes of mice and men”, as the poet Robert Burns however lamented, “gang aft agley”, and, if the lower functionaries in his office persist in passing orders such as the one before me, the best intentions of the learned Controller General will fail to bear fruit,” the court said.

Observing that it was the fourth case where such an order had come up before the court, Justice Shankar said: “If the passing of such orders persists, the Court may be constrained to take more drastic steps, which might in the end result impact the officer who passes the order personally. For the present, however, the Court is desisting from doing so.”

The court allowed the appeal moved by an entity namely Synthes GMBH and quashed the impugned order passed on October 08, 2020, by the Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs vide which its application for grant of a patent in respect of “Bone Fixation Apparatus” was rejected.

Title: SYNTHES GMBH v. CONTROLLER GENERAL OF PATENTS, DESIGNS AND TRADEMARKS AND ANR

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Del) 401

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