Compliance with the provisions of the Patent Act 1970 and Rules 24B(2) and 24B(3) must be adhered to, and staff shortage cannot be a valid reason for non-compliance.

1. The petitioner Dr.Vinitha Ponnukutty has filed Writ Petition No.20683 of 2010 under Article 226 of the Constitution of India seeking issuance of a Mandamus to direct the 1st respondent-The Controller of Patents & Designs Patents Office Branch Intellectual Property Right Building Industrial Estate to process the petitioner's Patent Application No.863/CHE/2007 titled ENTERAL TUBE FEED FORMULA FOR CRITICALLY ILL PATIENTS by referring the same for examination and issue the First examination report.

2. The petitioner has also filed the Writ Petition No.20684 of 2010 under Article 226 of the Constitution of India seeking issuance of a Mandamus to direct the 1st respondent-The Controller of Patents & Designs Patents Office Branch Intellectual Property Right Building Industrial Estate to process the petitioner's Patent Application No.864/CHE/2007 titled ENTERAL TUBE FEED FORMULA FOR CRITICALLY ILL PATIENTS by referring the same for examination and issue the First examination report.

3. (i)The learned counsel appearing for the petitioner has submitted that the petitioner Dr.Vinitha Ponnukutty is Doctorate Degree holder from the University of Madras. She is specialised in "Formulation, Standardisation and Evaluation of two low cost indigenous enteral tube feeding formulae for the critically ill patients." By keeping in mind the economic scenario of the Indian population and knowing that commercial tube feeding diets are priced high, the petitioner made attempts to formulate and standardize low cost feeding formulae for the critically ill and patients and after her research for six years, she also succeeded in her research and came with a unique and cost effective indigenous enteral tube feeding formulae. After submitting the thesis to the University of Madras, she was awarded the Doctorate Degree for her research. She being the sole inventor of the above inventions, she also filed an application for obtaining patents for the above inventions on 23.04.2007 vide Patent Application No.863/CHE/2007 titled "Enteral Tube Feed Formula for critically ill patients and Patent Application No.864/Che/2007 titled "Enteral Tube Feed Formula for critically ill diabetic patients" by paying the requisite fee.

(ii)The only contention putforth for issuance of a writ of mandamus to the respondents is as per the Patent Act 1970, Patent Applications will be published in the official gazette on the expiry of 18 months from the date of filing or the date of priority whichever is earlier. Accordingly the petitioner's applications were published on 18.7.2008 in the official patent gazette. A request for examination must be filed after the publication of the application but within 36 months from the date of priority or date of filing whichever is earlier. Accordingly, the petitioner has also filed requests for examination on 30.10.2008 for the abovesaid patents, of course after making the requisite fee. As per Section 12(2) of the Patents Act 1970 r/w Rule 24-B(2)(i) and (ii) of the Patents Rules 2003, when a request for Examination has been filed, the Controller shall refer the application and the specification and other document to the examiner within one month from the date of request for examination. Thereafter, the examiner to whom the application and the specification and other documents related thereto are referred under Section 12(1) shall ordinarily make the report to the Controller within one month but not exceeding 3 months. But in the present case, the applications submitted by the petitioner ought to have been referred to the examiner on or before 30.11.2008 and such examiner thereafter should have given his report to the Controller of Patents on or before 20.2.2009. Subsequently, the examination report along with the applications and the specification should have been reached the petitioner or her agent by 30.4.2009. In spite of the directions mentioned as above, the petitioner's application has not been referred to the examiner for pre