Greeva Garg–
Delhi High Court has dismissed a plea filed by AstraZeneca seeking an injunction against the sale of anti-diabetes drug ‘Dapagliflozin’ by other generic Pharma Companies such as torrent, USV, Micro Labs, Zydus and others.
The High Court held that “two patents cannot be granted for one invention- one for genus and the other for species.”
Dismissing the plea by affixing Rs. 5,00,000/- costs, the division bench comprising of Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and Justice Amit 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.”
The petitioners challenged two separate Judgments of a single bench of the Delhi High Court passed on the same facts, dismissing their plea independently to each other.
The petitioner alleged the infringement of type II diabetes drug compound arises after the expiration of the patent for IN 147 (genus patent; expired on October 2020), thus claiming the infringement of IN 625 (species patent; expiring in May 2023), the subject matter of both being DAPA.
The Court observed that an inventor only based on his research work or discovery can restrain the others for further research in the same field.
“The same will enable busybodies to, by walking only part of the mile, prevent others also from completing the mile,” the Court concluded.