M.M. SUNDRESH, J.

1. The issues to be decided in this writ petition are as to whether an appeal is maintainable at the instance of the applicant for patent before the Intellectual Property Appellate Board, challenging the order of the Controller in rejecting the application for patent and if so a person making the opposition is entitled to be heard in the appeal or not?

2. Facts in Brief:-

2. 1. An application was filed by M/s.Overture Services Inc., a Delaware Corporation having its place of business in U.S.A. The International Application No.PCT/US00/14753 entered the National Phase as National Phase Application No.IN/PCT/2001/01652/CHE. The invention which was originally titled as "System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine" was later amended to "A method of operating a computer network search apparatus". The International Application was filed on 26.03.2000. The said U.S. Application was granted as U.S.Patent No.6269361 on 31.07.2001. Thereafter, the said M/s.Overture Services Inc., got merged with the petitioner namely, M/s.Yahoo! Inc.

2. 2. As per Section 11-A of the Patents Act, 1970, the appl