Recently, the Madras High Court, in a writ petition filed by Galatea Ltd. (“Petitioner”), directed the Registrar General of the Madras High Court to frame rules to transfer pending cases from the erstwhile Intellectual Property Appellate Board (“IPAB”), Chennai to the High Court, and directed the State of Tamil Nadu (“State”) to notify the Intellectual Property Division Rules, 2022 in the official gazette at the earliest.
The Petitioner, aggrieved by the abolishment of the IPAB, sought a writ of mandamus directing the Registrar General to frame rules to transfer pending cases from the erstwhile IPAB and list them before appropriate benches of the court. The Petitioner had earlier filed an appeal before IPAB, Chennai, to challenge an order passed by the Controller General of Patents, Chennai, rejecting its patent application, which has now hit a dead-end.
The court noted that, out of over two thousand cases received from the erstwhile IPAB, over one thousand are pending for notification of rules and, in many cases, the patents would expire. The Registrar General submitted that he had, earlier reached out to the State to notify the Madras High Court Intellectual Property Division Rules, 2022 in the official gazette, and is prepared to inaugurate the Intellectual Property Division of the court within a week from the date of such notification, following which, the court granted a week’s time to the State to issue the notification.
The court, while acknowledging the delay caused to litigants, directed the State to notify the Madras High Court Intellectual Property Rights Division Rules, 2022, within one week, and asked the Registrar General to make necessary arrangements to inaugurate the IP Division of the Madras High Court, upon notification of the rules in the official gazette.
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