Procrastination in IP may cost big!!

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C.S.No.282 of 2019 and and A.No.3184 of 2019 in High Court of Judicature Madras

The plaintiff and its Indian subsidiary filed this civil suit alleging infringement of its product patent “Linagliptin” by the defendant stating that the defendant violated granted patents bearing nos. 243301 and 227719 by launching, making, using, offering for sale, selling, importing and / or exporting the medicinal product, Linagliptin.

The Defendant in its written statement stated that it did in fact obtained license to manufacture the drug “Linagliptin Tablet” from the department of Drug Control and in December 2017. However, it did not manufacture the said drug.

On receipt of suit summons, defendant surrendered the license to the Drug Controller vide letter dated 27.05.2019 and stated that there remained no cause of action which could sustain the said suit. 

An Advocated appointed as Commissioner inspected the premises of the defendant along with the officials of Drug Control department and reported the defendant did not manufacture the said drug.

Further the defendant gave an undertaking that he will not manufacture the drug “Linagliptin” as long as the plaintiff holds the exclusive patent right of the said drug. 

Court concluded that there has been no instance of infringement and dismissed the suit.

Question comes to one's mind why the prior check on existing patent pertaining to the said drug was not done? if it was performed then defendant could have easily found the existence of Plaintiff's patents. Why defendant applied for license to manufacture the drug? Doesn't application for license to manufacture prove intentions of manufacture? As rightly said, there can be no smoke without fire!

A timely action by the Plaintiff in this case saved a lot of cost to the Plaintiff as well as to the defendants and hence the title of this post - Procrastination in IP may cost big!!


~until next time~

Cheers!

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