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 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.