Two Patents Cannot Be Granted For One Invention- One for Genus and The Other for Species: Delhi High Court Dismisses Plea By AztraZeneca

The Delhi High Court has held that two patents cannot be granted for one invention- one for genus and the other for species. A claim of two patents for one invention only strikes at the very root of the appellants’ claim and disentitles the appellants from any interim relief. Dismissing the plea by affixing Rs.5,00,000/- costs, a division bench of Justices Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and Rajiv Bansal observed that the rights of a patentee, unlike that of the proprietor of a trademark, are not natural or common law rights but are a creation of law, i.e., are statutory rights. Thus, for a patentee to enjoy protection, the rights must be within the four corners of the statute, i.e., the Patents Act, and there are no rights independently thereof or inherent or common law rights of an inventor or patentee. In a batch of nine pleas by AstraZeneca seeking an injunction against the sale of anti-diabetes drug ‘Dapagliflozin’ by generic Pharma companies- Torrent, USV, Micro Labs, Zydus, and others. It was challenging two separate judgments of single judge benches of Delhi High Court passed on the same facts, dismissing their plea independently of each other.