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Patent Law: Decisions of the Supreme Court of India

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Field Value
 
Title Patent Law: Decisions of the Supreme Court of India
 
Creator Aqa Raza
 
Subject Utilitarian Theory
The Patents Act
1970
Theoretical Underpinning
Supreme Court of India
Ratiocination
Intellectual Property
Labour Theory
Publici Juris
Society
Scientific Research
Nonsense on Stilts
Industrial Progress
Invention
Discovery
Patent System
Common Law
Utility
 
Description 285-289
This Paper seeks to examine the theoretical underpinnings of The Patents Act, 1970 (Patents Act), as constructed by
the Supreme Court of India (Supreme Court) in the last 71 years. An analysis of decisions of the Supreme Court reveals
that: (i) in none of the cases, validity of The Patents Act was challenged; (ii) unlike the decisions on copyright and
design laws where the Court invoked both Labour and Utilitarian frameworks as supplementary and complimentary to each
other to justify the ‘why’ of two distinct copyrights envisaged by The Copyright Act, 1957 and The Designs Act, 2000,
the Court in patent cases has used only Utilitarian Theory; (iii) Court has not ignored Natural Right and Labour theories as
in its opinion Natural Right justification is only a means to achieve the end of social good; (iv) in the opinion of the Court,
both ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’ of Bentham may coexist as means and end; and (v) protection of patent rewards labour put in by
the inventor and in exchange provides invention and knowledge to the society. Paper argues that the Court should have
applied judicially manageable standards to rigorously scrutinize the theoretical underpinnings of Patent Law from all
possible angles.
 
Date 2022-09-01T11:56:55Z
2022-09-01T11:56:55Z
2022-07
 
Type Article
 
Identifier 0975-1076 (Online); 0971-7544 (Print)
http://nopr.niscpr.res.in/handle/123456789/60452
https://doi.org/10.56042/jipr.v27i4.55928
 
Language en
 
Publisher NIScPR-CSIR, India
 
Source JIPR Vol.27(4) [July 2022]