KAY & Partners — Insights
Commentary on recent judgments and regulatory developments across our practice areas. Analysis is factual and educational. Nothing here constitutes legal advice.
The Per Se Problem
India Has Been Refusing Software Patents for Two Decades. The Patent Office Has Now Explained When It Will Not.
Most people who deal with Indian patent practice know that software is difficult here, and stop there. The received position is that India does not grant software patents, and applicants with software-implemented inventi…
Read analysis →The Obviousness Shortcut
The Patent Office Revoked a Battery Patent Made From Cattle Manure. It Did Not Show Its Working.
Hindsight is the permanent occupational hazard of assessing inventive step. Once an invention has been explained, it tends to look inevitable. The components were all known. The problem was well understood. Somebody was …
Read analysis →The Price of Absence
They Kept Advertising the Drug After the Injunction. It Cost Them Ten Lakh on Top of the Damages.
Indian patent litigation has a reputation for producing injunctions and not much else. Suits are filed, interim relief is fought over at length, and then matters settle, or drift, or are quietly abandoned once the commer…
Read analysis →The Last Five Months
The Patent Had Five Months Left to Run. The Delhi High Court Let the Biosimilar In Anyway.
A patent with five months of life left is a peculiar thing to litigate. Whatever the court eventually decides about validity or infringement, the monopoly will be gone before the suit is anywhere near trial. The interim …
Read analysis →The Administration Trap
The Claim Described How the Drugs Would Be Given. The Patent Office Called That a Method of Treatment.
Section 3(i) of the Patents Act is short, and for pharmaceutical applicants it is one of the most expensive sentences in Indian law. It excludes from patentability any process for the medicinal, curative or prophylactic …
Read analysis →The Unrecorded Guarantee
The Guarantee Never Appeared in the Balance Sheet. The Supreme Court Says It Is Still Financial Debt.
There is a moment early in every corporate insolvency when the resolution professional decides who counts. Claims come in, get verified, get admitted or rejected, and the Committee of Creditors takes shape around those d…
Read analysis →The Vendor's Shadow
Your Supplier Collected the Tax and Never Passed It On. That Is Now Your Problem.
The notice usually lands about eighteen months late. By then the invoice is a line in a reconciliation nobody has opened since it was filed, and the person who approved the purchase order has moved on.
Read analysis →The Dynamic Shield
A Delhi High Court Order Now Protects Cricket Matches Before They Are Played
A rogue streaming site has one critical advantage over a rights holder seeking injunctive relief: it does not need to exist before the match starts. It can appear hours before the first ball, attract a hundred thousand v…
Read analysis →The Head Office Cap
The Supreme Court Closes the Section 44C Loophole Foreign Banks Thought They Had
A branch office of a foreign bank operates in India, but it does not operate alone. Behind every branch is a head office — in New York, in London, in Tokyo — running the systems, carrying the compliance infrastructure, m…
Read analysis →Page 1 of 4 — 33 articles
The analyses published here are prepared by the editorial team of KAY & Partners and are intended solely as general commentary on judicial and regulatory developments. They do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Bar Council of India Rules prohibit advocates from soliciting work or advertising in a manner that implies specialisation or past success. Nothing on this page constitutes a testimonial, endorsement, or guarantee of outcome.