The previous article published in our firm’s IPR Amicus, Issue No. 135 (December 2022)[1] highlighted evolving jurisprudence and the principles for filing divisional applications in India as laid out by the erstwhile Intellectual Property Appellate Board (‘IPAB’) and the Delhi High Court.

A key prerequisite for filing a divisional application, as mentioned in the previous article, is that the presence of plurality of invention has to exist, not just in the specification, but also in the claims of the parent (first mentioned) application.

This prerequisite can be clearly drawn from the following orders:

(1) Order No. OA/66/2020/PT/DEL dated 27 October 2020, of IPAB, Esco Corporation v. Controller of Patents & Designs[2];

(2) Order No. OA/3/2015/PT/MUM dated 27 October 2020, of IPAB, UCB Pharma S.A. v. Controller of Patents & Designs[3]; and

(3) Boehringer Ingelheim International GMBH v. The Controller of Patents & Anr., dated 12 July 2022, of the Delhi High Court[4].

Emphasis is drawn on to some excerpts of the above-mentioned orders:


Aythors: Gaurav Gupta, Director and Shashank Kinra, Senior Patent Analyst   LKS