On 18 May 2026 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in Bansal v. Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV, set aside the 2018 single-judge SEP infringement decree by Justice Manmohan on Philips' DVD-related Indian Patent IN 184753 and articulated, for the first time at the Division Bench level in India, the evidentiary baseline a Standard-Essential Patent holder must meet at trial. The DB held that essentiality is a fact requiring proof through claim-charts mapped to the standard and through cross-examinable witnesses; that Philips' right was exhausted under Section 107A(b) of the Patents Act 1970 because the DVD components had been put on the market in China by Philips' authorised licensees; and that comparable-licence evidence is required to discharge the FRAND-rate burden. The ruling resets the FRAND-evidence architecture for the Ericsson, Nokia, Dolby and Malikie actions still on foot.
On 15 July 2014 a two-judge Division Bench of the Bombay High Court (Mohit S. Shah, C.J., presiding, with M.S. Sanklecha, J.) affirmed India's first — and to date only successful — compulsory-licence grant under *Section 84* of the *Patents Act 1970*. The decision sustained the Controller's 9 March 2012 order granting Natco Pharma a compulsory licence over Bayer's IN 215758 (Sorafenib Tosylate, sold as Nexavar) on all three independent grounds under *Section 84(1)* — reasonable requirements of the public unmet, price not reasonably affordable, and patent not worked in India. The Special Leave Petition was dismissed on 12 December 2014 with the questions of law left open. The judgment, read with the subsequent rejections of the BDR Pharma (Dasatinib) and Lee Pharma (Saxagliptin) applications, defines the practical contours of Indian compulsory licensing in the post-TRIPS public-health architecture.
On 29 March 2023 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in Intex Technologies (India) Ltd v. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, delivered the country's first authoritative appellate framework on standard-essential patents and FRAND licensing. The judgment by Justices Manmohan and Saurabh Banerjee dismissed Intex's appeal, allowed Ericsson's cross-appeal, doubled the royalty security ordered by the Single Judge, held that injunctions and pro-tem royalty deposits are available to SEP holders against unwilling licensees, ruled that parallel CCI proceedings do not oust Patent Act jurisdiction, and established the 'willing licensee' inquiry as the central test in Indian SEP litigation. A close reading of the Bench's reasoning, the two-way street it builds between SEP holders and implementers, and the bespoke Indian remedy of pro-tem security that now travels through Nokia v. OPPO, Ericsson v. Lava and the wider Delhi SEP docket.
The May 2026 cycle in Indian intellectual-property law has produced three doctrinal threads running in parallel — the Division Bench reset of the SEP-evidence architecture in Bansal v. Philips and the parallel pro-tem FRAND security in Malikie v. Xiaomi; the Delhi High Court DB's close-out of the Ilaiyaraaja-Saregama composer-rights line under the pre-1994 Copyright Act architecture; and the Calcutta High Court's first Indian engagement with the generative-AI/IP interface in Indiamart v. OpenAI. Read alongside Syngenta on agrochemical polymorphism and Section 3(d), Orient Electric on Designs Act anticipation discipline, Médecins Sans Frontières on trade-mark use in fictional film content, Indian Explosives on Section 12A pre-institution mediation in copyright suits, Communication Components Antenna on antenna-patent damages quantum, and Ars Steels on procedural fairness at the Designs Controller, the cycle discloses the operational architecture within which Indian IP practice now operates.
On 1 April 2013 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court dismissed Novartis's decade-long campaign for an Indian patent on the beta-crystalline form of Imatinib Mesylate — sold abroad as Glivec (and as Gleevec in the United States). The Court read *Section 3(d)* of the *Patents Act 1970* as a heightened patentability filter for incremental pharmaceutical claims, glossed 'efficacy' as 'therapeutic efficacy', and held that improvements in bioavailability, hygroscopicity and flow are physico-chemical attributes that do not, without more, cross the s.3(d) threshold. The judgment supplied the doctrinal architecture for India's post-TRIPS anti-evergreening regime and remains the anchoring authority on incremental-pharma patentability.
On 27 November 2015 a two-judge Division Bench of the Delhi High Court (Pradeep Nandrajog, J. and Mukta Gupta, J.) delivered the long-awaited decision on Roche's IN 196774 — the Indian patent on Erlotinib Hydrochloride, sold as Tarceva — and Cipla's accused generic Erlocip. The Bench held the suit patent valid, held Cipla's Polymorph B product within the scope of the compound patent (the failure of Roche's downstream Polymorph B claim under *Section 3(d)* did not narrow the parent compound patent), declined a permanent injunction because the patent was within months of expiry, and — most consequentially — held that *Section 3(d)* of the *Patents Act 1970* is a patent-eligibility provision operating at the grant stage and is not available as a defence at the infringement stage. The decision imposed ₹5 lakh in costs on Cipla and remanded for an accounts inquiry. The Special Leave Petition was admitted in 2016 and withdrawn under settlement in June 2017; the Delhi Bench's framework remains good law.