The main legal point established in the judgment is that the grant or refusal of a temporary injunction under the Patent Act has to be influenced by and linked with the merits of the counter-claim for revocation of the patent, and the jurisdiction for deciding the suit vests with the High Court once a counter-claim for revocation of the patent is filed.

ORDER :- In a suit filed by respondent No. 1 against the five appellants herein and respondent No. 2 herein (who was defendant No. 6 in the said suit), the learned District Judge, Udham Singh Nagar at Rudrapur passed an ex parte ad interim injunction in favour of the aforesaid plaintiff-respondent No. 1 herein and against the defendants-appellants herein.

2. Aggrieved by the passing of the said ex parte ad interim injunction at the stage of threshold of the suit by which time naturally the appellants had not even been summoned as defendants in the suit, the appellants filed A.O. No. 412 of 2007 in this Court. By a detailed judgment dated 1-10-2007, the learned single Judge of this Court while dismissing the aforesaid appeal of the appellants, granted liberty to the appellants to file objections to the Temporary Injunction Application in the trial Court. The learned trial Court was directed by the learned single Bench of this Court in the aforesaid appeal to decide the Temporary Injunction Application within one month.

3. Aggrieved by the aforesaid order passed by this Court in A.O. No. 412 of 2007, the appellants approached the Supreme Court in Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No. 20925 of 2007. Their Lordships of the Supreme Court vide order dated 26th November, 2007 passed in the aforesaid SLP, while dismissing the same, directed the parties to appear before the District Judge, Udham Singh Nagar at Rudrapur on 11th December, 2007. The District Judge, in turn, was directed by the Supreme Court to take up the Temporary Injunction Application for final hearing on day-to-day basis and dispose it of.

4. The learned District Judge passed the impugned order on 18-12-2007 after hearing the parties. Vide the impugned order, he issued an injunction against appellants restraining them from violating the patent etc. of respondent No. 1 - plaintiff and producing and selling the product etc. (as have been mentioned in details in the operative part of the order). Aggrieved, the appellants have come up to this Court in the present appeal filed u/S. 104 read with Order 43, Rule 1(r) of the Code of Civil Procedure.

5. Mr. S.K. Bansal, for learned counsel appearing for the appellants took me through various provisions of the Patent Act, 1970, particularly Section 3(f), Section 25(2), Section 64, Section 104 and Section 107. According to Mr. Bansal, the very arrangement or re-arrangement or duplication of the known devices, each device functioning individually or with one another in a known way, does not amount to an invention within the meaning of the Patent Act, 1970. He submitted that in terms of sub-section (2) of Section 25, the appellants have already objected to the grant of two patents in favour of respondent No. 1 - plaintiff. Mr. Bansal, informed me and this is not disputed by the learned counsel appearing for respondent No. 1 and is also borne out from the records of the case that in the aforesaid pending suit, the defendants (appellants herein) have filed their counter-claim. Under S. 64 of the Act, a patent can be revoked either on a petition filed by any person interested etc. etc. or upon a counter-claim filed in a suit and in such a situation, the revocation of the patent has to be made by the High Court. Even though, u/S. 104, the jurisdiction to entertain and decide the suit for a declaration, etc. or for any other relief relating to the infringement of a patent vests in a District Court, proviso to Section 104 clearly states that where a counter-claim for revocation of the patent is made by the defendant in the suit, the suit along with the counterclaim shall be transferred to the High Court for decision.

6. Section 104 of the Act for the ready reference is reproduced herein, which reads as under :

"104. Jurisdiction.- No suit for a declaration under Section 105 or for any relief under Section 106 or for infringement of a patent shall be instituted in any Court inferior to a district Court having jurisdiction to try the suit :

Provi

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