The main legal point established in the judgment is the importance of accurate references to prior art documents and the need to ensure a fair and accurate consideration of patent applications.

JUDGMENT

Prathiba M. Singh, J. (Oral)--This hearing has been done through hybrid mode.

2. The delay in filing the appeal is condoned.

3. M/s Dow Agrosciences LLC has filed the present appeal challenging the impugned order dated 14th July, 2020 by which the application for grant of a patent for patent application bearing No. 9212//DELNP/2012 titled `Stabilized Agricultural Oil Dispersions' (hereinafter `subject patent') has been refused under Section 15 of the Patents Act, 1970 (hereinafter `the Act'). By the said impugned order, the Appellant's application for patent has been refused on several grounds including lack of inventive step on the basis of various prior art documents. The subject patent application was filed before the Indian Patent Office (IPO) on 25th October, 2012 as a national phase application and was published under Section 11A of the Act on 19th February, 2016. The priority date of the subject patent application is 26th April, 2010.

4. A first examination report (FER) dated 29th December, 2017 was issued raising objections relating to lack of inventive step under Section 2(1)(ja) of the Act, citing three prior art documents, non-patentability under Section 3(e) of the Act as also lack of clarity and conciseness under Section 10(4)(c) and Section 10(5) of the Act. The Appellant filed a response to the said FER on 26th June, 2018 and dealt with all the three prior arts documents cited by the ld. Controller. The three prior arts cited in the FER in support of the objection of lack of inventive step are set out in the following table:

5. Thereafter, a hearing notice dated 18th November, 2019 was issued on behalf of the IPO in which again D1 to D3 were cited for the objection on lack of inventive step. In addition, in the said hearing notice, a further set of 19 prior art documents, i.e., D4 to D22 were cited in support of the objection of lack of inventive step. In addition, the objections under non-patentability under Section 3(e) of the Act and insufficiency of disclosure were also raised in the said hearing notice. The matter was then heard before the ld. Controller and finally by the impugned order, the subject patent application was refused.

6. The Court has heard ld. Counsels for the Appellant and the Respondent and also perused the record. The grievance of the ld. Counsel for the Appellant is in three-fold:

i) Firstly, the one of the reasons for rejection i.e. in respect of how the term `consisting essentially' is to be construed was never raised in any previous objections or in the FER.

ii) Secondly, some of the prior arts documents i.e., D-16 and D7 have been wrongly referred to by the ld. Controller. Ld. Counsel contends that document D-16 as referred to internal page 17 of the order does not have a column 2 and the content is completely different.

iii) Thirdly, the document D-7, i.e., EP0789999 titled `Herbicidal Oil Suspension Concentrates' that is referred to, is a German document, and the reference to the same is not corrigible. It appears that the extractions in the impugned order have been taken from some other documents to which there is no reference in the impugned order. The relevant portion of the impugned order concerning Document D-7 is extracted below:

D7 describes in example 3 a composition which corresponds to the components (a) to (e) of the present composition which is thermally stable (see page 28, 3rd paragraph, 1st sentence).

He submits that such a reference cannot be found in D-7 at all and D-7 is a document which is in German with only ten pages. It is, thus, pleaded that the impugned order deserves to be set aside on this ground itself. It has also been averred by the ld. Counsel for the Appellant, that the above reference does not