Skip to main content

The Ferid Allani patent application in relation to software related inventions in particular Section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act has had a long history. Finally, we saw light at the end of the tunnel when Hon’ble Justice Manmohan Singh passed a landmark decision on Section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act and held that the invention of Ferid Allani had a significant technical contribution to the state of art and possess critical technical effect. Hon’ble Justice set aside the order of the Patent Office that rejected a patent application of Ferid Allani for “Method and Device for Accessing Information Sources and Services on the web” and granted a patent. The Patent Office despite the decision of  Hon’ble Justice Pratibha Singh misread and misapplied the order of the High Court in relation to technical effect and technical contribution in relation to patenting of software related inventions.

The Hon’ble Chairman for the first time defined technical effect and held that the Computer Related Inventions, 2013 (CRI Guidelines, 2013) issued by the Patent Office “provide coherent guidance in terms of the indicators of technical effect”, which include higher speed; more economic use of memory and more efficient data base strategy. The IPAB also held that the mere fact that a computer program is used for effectuating a part of the invention does not provide a bar to patentability and that an invention must be examined as a whole taking into consideration its technical effect and technical contribution.

Behind this achievement were Pravin Anand, Archana Shanker, Shrawan Chopra, Sandeep K Bhola, Vibhav Mithal and Bobby Jain

Read the full order here – http://updates.anandandanand.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Ferid-Allani_Landmark-judgement.pdf

Most Recent

News & Insights

VIEW ALL
News & Updates, Thought Leadership
Jan 15, 2026

First published by Lexology. Authors: Safir Anand, Mudit Kaushik and Sehr Anand The handling of price sensitive corporate information has become increasingly

The Regulatory Cost of Informal Digital Disclosures
News & Updates
Jan 02, 2026

First published by Lexology. Authors: Pravin Anand, Saif Khan, Shobhit Agarwal and Prajjwal Kushwaha A. Background B. Legal Issues Addressed C. Directions

LANDMARK RULING ON DOMAIN NAME FRAUD AND SYSTEMIC REFORMS IN DIGITAL COMMERCE
Thought Leadership
Jan 01, 2026

First published on Enterprise IT World. Authored by Subroto Kumar Panda As we stand on the final day of 2025, reflecting on a year of dizzying

The Great Dissolve: Re-Engineering Enterprise Workflows for the 2026 AI Paradigm
Thought Leadership
Dec 19, 2025

First published on Express Computer. Authored by Subroto Kumar Panda The notification of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025, marks

The DPDP: An 18-month compliance imperative for the C-suite