Nine years remained on a patent for a machine that folds the corners of woven plastic cement bags, yet the Allahabad High Court refused to treat that remaining term as a reason to freeze a competitor’s business. The case concerned a patent infringement injunction against a rival bag-converting machine.<\/p>\n
Lohia Corp Ltd (“Lohia”) makes machinery for the woven plastics industry from plants in Kanpur and Bengaluru and sells Valvomatic valve bag conversion machines. It owns Indian Patent No. 431032, titled “A Device and a Method for Controlling the Motion of a Spreader Bar”, granted on 3 February 2015 and valid until 3 February 2035. Five Fingers Exports India Private Limited (“Five Fingers”), a Coimbatore-based MSME and recognised start-up incorporated in 2020, sells a competing machine called FFE VALVO. Lohia learned in October 2025 that a customer, the second defendant, had bought an FFE VALVO, and its team inspected the machine on 15 December 2025.<\/p>\n
Lohia sued under the Patents Act, 1970 (“Patents Act”) before the Commercial Court, Varanasi, and sought an interim injunction. Lohia filed a scientific advisor’s report with its rejoinder on 7 May 2026. After one hearing on 13 May, the court on 22 May 2026 restrained Five Fingers from manufacturing or selling infringing valve bag conversion machines. Five Fingers appealed to a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court.<\/p>\n
The court noted that the Commercial Court order ran to 67 paragraphs, of which the first 40 largely reproduced Lohia’s case and only one recorded the defence of Five Fingers. The court observed that the prima facie finding was cursory, ignored the defence and wrongly assumed that Five Fingers had admitted Lohia’s contentions.<\/p>\n
The court held that a patent infringement injunction cannot rest on an untested expert opinion, and that the Commercial Court erred by adopting the scientific advisor’s conclusion without testing the report’s admissibility and veracity. It pointed out that the report arrived on 7 May 2026 and became the basis of an order within three weeks. The court further observed that Section 115 of the Patents Act contemplates an independent adviser appointed by the court, for questions of fact or opinion and not for interpreting law. The court found that the lower court rejected the defendant’s reliance on Zydus Lifesciences Limited v. E.R. Squibb and Sons LLC<\/em> (2026 SCC OnLine Del 483), which demands clear product-to-claim mapping before an injunction, on the strength of the expert’s opinion alone.<\/p>\n The court stated that claim construction is the first and most significant exercise in an infringement suit, as Guala Closures SPA v. AGI Greenpac Limited<\/em> (2024 SCC OnLine Del 3510) recognised. It noted that the dispute turned on whether a flaring plate and folding plate moving inward could amount to a spreader bar. Where there is no literal infringement, the court observed, the doctrine of equivalents<\/strong> requires three questions drawn from Crystal Crop Protection Limited v. Safex Chemicals India Limited<\/em> (2025 (103) PTC 315 (Del)):<\/p>\n The patentee must answer yes to the first two and no to the third, and the court held that the Commercial Court never asked them.<\/p>\n The court opined that, in granting the patent infringement injunction, the Commercial Court wrongly treated the nine remaining years of the patent as deciding balance of convenience and irreparable injury. It found the reasoning that Lohia’s research served humanity out of context. The court reasoned that a judge should first ask whether damages would adequately compensate the patentee if it won at trial, and should weigh the hardship of interrupting an established enterprise, which the order never did for Five Fingers.<\/p>\n The court stated that gross suppression of a material patent can defeat an injunction. It declined to record any finding on whether the 2012 application was relevant or required disclosure under Section 10(4) of the Patents Act, and it left that question to the Commercial Court.<\/p>\n In view of the observations and the arguments presented by both the parties, the Allahabad High Court held that:<\/p>\nClaim Construction Comes First, Equivalents Come Second<\/h3>\n
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Remaining Term Is Not a Yardstick<\/h3>\n
Concealment Left Open<\/h3>\n
Findings<\/h2>\n
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