The court has the authority to allow a change of name under Section 151 of the CPC.

JUDGMENT

Sanjeev Narula, J. (Oral):

I.A. No. 5882/2023 (under Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 ["CPC"] seeking change of name of Appellant from `Microsoft Corporation' to `Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC')

1. For the grounds and reasons stated therein, the application is allowed, and the name of the Appellant is changed to `Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC.'.

2. Amended memo of parties is taken on record and Registry is directed to reflect the change in their records.

3. Disposed of.

C.A.(COMM.IPD-PAT) 106/2022

4. The present appeal under Section 117A of the Patents Act, 1970 [hereinafter "Act"] impugns order dated 05th March, 2012 passed by the Assistant Controller of Patents and Design [Respondent] whereby Appellant's Indian Patent Application No. 487/DELNP/2006 titled as "ADVANCED BI-DIRECTIONAL PREDICTIVE CODING OF INTERLACED VIDEO" filed on 30th January, 2006 [hereinafter "subject patent"], has been rejected [hereinafter "impugned order"] under Section 15 of the Act.

5. Ms. Vindhya S. Mani, counsel for Appellant, argues that impugned order provides insufficient and insignificant reasoning to support the conclusion. No thoughtful analysis has been applied, and the claims in the subject patent have been rejected on an ambiguous rationale of not following a "method step format". Ms. Mani underscores the fact that the phrase "method step format", as employed by the Respondent, is puzzling and not defined in the Act. Respondent has used similar vague terms and phrases for Claims 1 to 10, labelling them as "redundant" and "large sized". Ms. Mani is quick to point out that neither the Patent Act nor the Rules framed thereunder prescribe any limitation on the number and/or size of claims.¹ [Reliance is placed on the Sections 05.03.16 and 05.03.17 of the Manual of Patent Office Practice and Procedure dated 26th November, 2019 which, inter alia, provides that there is no restriction on the number of claims as long as they are linked so as to form a single inventive concept, an application can have more than one independent claim]. She submits that the Respondent has also not applied the correct legal principles for rejecting the subject patent holding it to be beyond the scope of Section 3(k) of the Act.

6. At the outset, Ms. Arunima Dwivedi, Central Government Standing Counsel appearing for Respondent, on instructions, states that Respondent can re-consider the patent application for the subject patent in case Appellant is willing to amend its claims in accordance with the granted claims in Europe (EP1665766).

7. Ms. Mani, responding to the above suggestion, argues that during the proceedings before the Respondent, claims were in fact amended at each stage and twice after the hearing. The impugned order must therefore, be set-aside as there is no clarity as to how the Respondent has arrived at the impugned decision.

8. Heard. The relevant portion of the impugned order reads as follows:

"After going through the arguments placed in the hearing and the written submission, I am of the opinion that claims 1 to 41 are not in the method step format i.e. the method steps should be defined clearly incorporating by what physical constructional features the said steps are being enabled in the method in order to make the method to function/work/operate. The physical constructional features shall be numbered. The Inventive method steps shall be characterized in the independent/principal claim but here the method steps are not in its format and the claims are mere statements, so claims are redundant, verbose & large size giving no clarity to the invention, hence falls under section 10(4) of the Indian Patent Act 1970.

The Inventive concept lies in algorithm steps, merely receiving, encoded data, ...., decoding, by reconstructing a forward motion vector, predicting a backward motion vector, etc., in the description and claims. Therefore the alleged invention falls under non-patentable subject matter. Hence claims 1 to 4