Delhi HC’s Judgment dated 13th July 2023 quashed the CCI’s appeal LPA/550/2016 defending its powers to investigate abuse of dominance by a patent granted to a patentee under the Patent Act of 1970. By doing so the HC has set aside its judgments of 2016 & 2020 – which gave a contrary view. Now, the current judgment is of paramount significance as it will exclude CCI from looking into matters related to the abuse of patents by patentees. The purpose of this note is to understand the rationale behind this judgment and how it differed from the previous pronouncements by the same court.
Current Judgment
The current judgment (as well as the previous ones) deals/dealt with this key question – Does Patent Act Override the Competition Act, if yes why?
