When Parliament abolished the Intellectual Property Appellate Board through the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021, it redirected patent appeals to the High Court. What seemed like administrative tidying has since generated a sharper question: once a patent applicant loses before a Single Judge on a statutory appeal, is there a further intra-court appeal to a Division Bench?<\/p>\n
Vishal Prafulsingh Solanke and his co-appellant (“Solanke”) filed Patent Application No. 879\/MUM\/2015 on 17 March 2015 for an invention titled “Thread Type Tamper Evident Security Seal.” A pre-grant opposition was filed against the application under Section 25(1) of the Patents Act, 1970. Following a hearing, the Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs indicated that certain amendments to the complete specification and claims could pave the way for grant. Solanke filed the required amendments. Despite that, on 14 June 2023, the Assistant Controller refused the patent application outright, holding that the opposition succeeded under Sections 25(1)(b) and 25(1)(e) of the Act.<\/p>\n
Solanke challenged the refusal before the Commercial Division of the Bombay High Court by filing a petition (Commercial Miscellaneous Petition No. 25369 of 2023) under Section 117A of the Patents Act, which permits appeals to the High Court against specified orders of the Controller. The Single Judge dismissed the petition on 27 March 2025, finding the Controller’s order substantiated with reasons and declining to interfere on merits. Solanke then filed an appeal (Commercial Appeal No. 13430 of 2025) before the Division Bench under Section 13(1-A) of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015. When the matter came up before the Division Bench, a threshold question immediately surfaced: did any statute actually permit this appeal?<\/p>\n
The Division Bench’s first task was to determine whether the Single Judge’s ruling is a “Judgment” or an “Order.” This matters because the proviso to Section 13(1-A) restricts appeals against “orders” to those specifically enumerated under Order XLIII CPC and Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in MITC Rolling Private Limited v. Renuka Realtors<\/em> (2025 SCC Online SC 2375), the court held that the proviso operates only on “orders”; the main provision of Section 13(1-A) permits appeals against “judgments” without that restriction. Since the Single Judge’s decision conclusively determined the parties’ rights, it is a “Judgment”<\/strong><\/span> for purposes of Section 2(9) CPC,\u00a0a<\/strong>nd the proviso posed no obstacle.<\/p>\n Solanke’s argument that the Single Judge exercised original jurisdiction, and that the proceedings therefore entered the Commercial Division as a first-instance matter, was rejected. The petition reached the Commercial Division through Section 117A of the Patents Act, which is an appellate provision: it confers on a party aggrieved by the Controller’s decision the right to approach the High Court. The court noted that Section 7 of the Commercial Courts Act is not confined to suits and applications, and that Section 12, governing determination of specified value, explicitly contemplates “Suit, Appeal or Application.” The Commercial Division accepted the Section 117A petition in the form in which it arrived, as an appeal, and adjudicated it as such.<\/p>\n This is the analytical core of the judgment, and where the Bombay Division Bench deliberately departs from the Delhi High Court’s position. Section 100A CPC bars any “further” appeal<\/span> <\/strong>from the judgment of a Single Judge who has decided an appeal arising from an original or appellate decree or order, overriding Letters Patent and any other law. The live question was whether the Controller of Patents, as the original decision-making authority, is the kind of forum whose orders attract that bar.<\/p>\n The Delhi High Court in Promoshirt SM SA v. Armassuisse<\/em> had held that the Registrar of Trade Marks lacks the trappings of a Civil Court and that Section 100A therefore did not bar a Letters Patent Appeal against a Single Judge’s ruling under Section 91 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999. The Bombay Division Bench declined to follow that reasoning in the context of the Patents Act. It drew a pointed distinction between the Registrar’s functions and those of the Controller of Patents<\/strong><\/span>. Under Sections 77, 79, and 80 of the Patents Act, the Controller is armed with powers to summon witnesses, compel document production, receive affidavit evidence, and take oral evidence. Orders as to costs are enforceable as a decree of a Civil Court. These are not incidental powers: the Controller adjudicates a genuine inter partes contest at the pre-grant stage, determining the rival claims of an applicant and an opponent on the basis of evidence. The court held that the Controller’s role in the scheme of the Patents Act is “of much more significance” than that of the Trademark Registrar, and that the Controller plainly has the trappings of a Civil Court.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The Supreme Court’s purposive reading of Section 100A in Mohd. Saud v. Shaik Mahfooz<\/em> was central to the court’s reasoning: Section 100A was enacted precisely to curtail the proliferation of appeals. To permit a second intra-court appeal in patent matters, after an already substantive first appeal before the Single Judge, would invert that purpose. The court also drew support from Kamal Kumar Dutta v. Ruby General Hospital<\/em> (where the Company Law Board’s trappings of a court sufficed to attract Section 100A) and from Glorious Investment Limited v. Dunlop International Limited<\/em> (2025 SCC Online Cal 8647), in which the Calcutta High Court reached the same conclusion in the context of Trade Mark Act appeals.<\/p>\n As for Solanke’s contention that Section 100A is displaced by the Commercial Courts Act’s framework, the court was unpersuaded. Section 16 of the Commercial Courts Act modifies the CPC only in relation to the trial of commercial suits; it does not exclude the CPC for purposes of appeals. Section 100A, therefore, continues to operate with full force, and no exception arises under Section 13(2) of the Commercial Courts Act, which bars appeals not in accordance with the Act’s own provisions.<\/p>\n In view of the observations and the arguments presented by both the parties, the Bombay High Court (Division Bench) held that:<\/p>\n Case Citation:<\/strong> Vishal Prafulsingh Solanke & Anr. v. Controller of Patent and Designs & Ors.<\/em>, Commercial Appeal (L) No. 13430 of 2025 (arising from Commercial Miscellaneous Petition No. 110 of 2025), Bombay High Court (Division Bench), decided on 9 March 2026. Neutral citation: 2026:BHC-OS:7027-DB. Available at https:\/\/indiankanoon.org\/doc\/63994794\/<\/a><\/p>\n Authored by Gaurav Mishra, Patent Attorney, BananaIP Counsels<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the Bombay High Court dismissed a patent applicant’s appeal after a Single Judge upheld the Controller’s refusal, the applicant tried a second round before the Division Bench. The court’s answer, drawing on Section 100A CPC and the “trappings of a Civil Court” doctrine closes a significant procedural door for Indian patent litigants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":149524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":16,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5495,6,14],"tags":[312,12667,1241,12364,12668,609,1453,6175,12365,12314],"class_list":["post-149523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-reviews","category-intellectual-property","category-patents","tag-bombay-high-court","tag-commercial-courts-act-2015","tag-controller-of-patents","tag-intra-court-appeal","tag-patent-appeal-maintainability","tag-patents-act-1970","tag-pre-grant-opposition","tag-quasi-judicial-authority","tag-section-100a-cpc","tag-section-117a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149526,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149523\/revisions\/149526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Original or Appellate Jurisdiction?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Does the Controller Have Trappings of a Civil Court?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Findings<\/h2>\n
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