Delhi High Court Dismisses Ericsson Appeal, Upholds Patent Office Refusal Of Data-Security Patent Application
Safiya Malik
The High Court of Delhi Single Bench of Justice Tejas Karia has dismissed an appeal by Swedish telecom major Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and affirmed the Patent Office’s 30 September 2019 refusal of its patent application for a data-security technique aimed at protecting out-of-order data delivery in reliable transport protocols. The court found that the claimed method—separating ordered and unordered data for different security processing and adding sequencing for unordered data—lacked an inventive step and would have been apparent to a skilled person in view of existing technology. Concluding that the Patent Office’s assessment did not warrant intervention, the bench said there was no basis to disturb the refusal.
The appeal arose from the refusal of a patent application relating to a method for providing data security in transport protocols supporting both ordered and unordered data delivery. The appellant had filed an international patent application claiming priority from an earlier United States application, followed by a corresponding Indian application examined by the Patent Office.
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During examination, objections were raised on the ground that the claimed invention lacked an inventive step under the Patents Act. After issuance of the First Examination Report, the appellant filed responses, appeared for a hearing, and submitted amended claims and written submissions.
The patent authority ultimately refused the application, holding that the claimed features were obvious in light of prior art documents. Aggrieved by this refusal, the appellant approached the High Court, contending that the invention introduced a novel technical solution by separating ordered and unordered delivery data within a security protocol and applying different security processing mechanisms. The respondent authority defended the refusal, asserting that the features claimed were already disclosed or rendered obvious by existing technical literature and patent documents.
The Court examined the nature of the claimed invention and the reasoning adopted by the patent authority and observed that “the Claim 1 of the Subject Application claims the ‘separating ordered delivery data and unordered delivery data in a security protocol running on top of the transport protocol’ and ‘perform different type of security processing for ordered delivery and unordered delivery data.’”
While analysing the prior art, the Court recorded that “Documents D1 to D3, as discussed above, disclose about TCP, SCTP, UDP, TLS and insertion of sequence number in message and sequences.” It further observed that “these cited documents also discuss the ordered and unordered delivery of data/message and modified SSL/TLS,” and therefore “these features are available in the prior art at the priority date of the Subject Application.”
The Court stated that “Document D2 makes it obvious for the PSITA to separate data messages for ‘ordered delivery’ and data messages for ‘unordered delivery’ into two message sequence spaces on the security layer and perform data security processing differently in these two spaces.”
Addressing the issue of inventive step, the Court recorded that “the reasoning provided in the Impugned Order is that after duly considering the extensive hearing submissions, the subject matter of Claim 1 is not inventive at the time of the alleged invention.” It observed that the claimed features would have been “obvious to a person skilled in the art,” and amounted to “nothing but a mere workshop result.”
With respect to the alleged contradiction in the impugned order, the Court noted that “there appears to be an inadvertent error in Paragraph Nos. 9 and 12 of the Impugned Order,” but recorded that “the Impugned Order does not require any interference.”
Finally, the Court stated that “the Impugned Order provides the detailed and adequate reasoning on how it would be obvious for PSITA to separate ordered delivery data and unordered delivery data in a security protocol running on top of the transport protocol in the light of documents D1 to D3.”
The Court directed that “the Impugned Order dated 30.09.2019 does not require any interference. The Appeal is dismissed. The Impugned Order dated 30.09.2019 is upheld.”
Advocates Representing the Parties
For the Appellant: Mr. Manish Aryan, Advocate; Mr. Nishant Rai, Advocate; Ms. Manisha Singh, Advocate; Mr. Abhai Pandey, Advocate; Ms. Anuja Agarwal, Advocate; Mr. Gautam Kumar, Advocate; Ms. Swati Mittal, Advocate; Mr. Druv Tandan, Advocate; Ms. Shivani Singh, Advocate; Ms. Shruthi Venugopal, Advocate; Ms. Akhya Anand, Advocate
For the Respondent: Ms. Rukhmini Bobde, Central Government Standing Counsel, with Mr. Amlaan Kumar, Advocate; Mr. Vinayak Aren, Advocate; Mr. Jatin Dhamija, Advocate; Mr. Anmol Jagga, Advocate
Case Title: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (Publ) v. Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks
Neutral Citation:2025:DHC:11927
Case Number: C.A.(COMM.IPD-PAT) 119/2022
Bench: Justice Tejas Karia
