Madras High Court Asks Patent Office To Re-Evaluate Objections Against Allied Metallurgical's Anti-Stick Coating Patent

The Madras High Court has recently set aside a Patent Office order that refused Hi Tech Chemicals' challenge to an anti-stick coating patent owned by Allied Metallurgical Products, after finding that the authority failed to properly examine the objections raised.

The court said that “the quality of obviousness analysis leaves much to be desired” and directed a fresh hearing before a different officer.

A single bench of Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, delivering the judgment on November 18, said the Patent Office did not explain why it rejected key arguments about whether the invention was new, inventive or offered any technical advantage.

Noting that the reasoning was incomplete, “A case is made out to interfere with the impugned order”, the order said.

The dispute concerns a 2019 patent for an anti-stick coating used in slag pots in steel plants granted to Allied Metallurgical Products. Hi Tech Chemicals filed a post-grant opposition, which is a legal process that allows any interested party to challenge a patent even after it has been granted. In July 2023, the Patent Office rejected the challenge, prompting Hi Tech Chemicals to approach the High Court.

Hi Tech Chemicals had argued that the technology was already being used and sold commercially before the patent application was filed. The court took note of a letter dated 23 January 2015 from JSW Steel, in which the company certified that Allied Metallurgical had been supplying its slag pot coating material “for past four years” to its Toranagallu steel plant.

Working backwards from the date of that letter, Hi Tech Chemicals argued that supply would have begun around January 2011, which is earlier than the patent application's priority date of 1 February 2012.

The company claimed this showed that the product was already being commercially sold before the patent was filed. The court said that while the letter alone did not conclusively establish prior sale, the Patent Office should have evaluated the issue and recorded a finding on the same.

The court also held that the Patent Office gave no meaningful explanation for rejecting documents that Hi Tech Chemicals said showed earlier similar technologies. The court pointed out that the order dismissed those documents as irrelevant without analysis.

On another issue, the court said the Patent Office had not examined whether the patented chemical mix produced any “synergy,” a requirement in some patent claims. It found that the decision only recorded a conclusion and not the reasoning, and stated that “the matter warrants reconsideration on this ground also.”

Ordering a fresh hearing within four months, the court said that a different officer must handle the matter “to preclude the possibility of predetermination”

The patent will continue to remain valid until the opposition is decided again.

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