The Hon’ble IPAB has allowed the Indian patent application IN/PCT/2002/00705/DEL titled “METHOD AND DEVICE FOR ACCESSING INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVIC ES OF THE WEB”, of ALLANI FERID by setting aside the impugned order of Indian Patent Office dated 7^th February, 2020.

The invention of appellant provided a forward looking solution in the form of an ‘Efficient Search Strategy’ to overcome the problems encountered in the traditional search engines which existed in 1999. Accordingly, the invention in consideration drastically reduces the mean time duration for accessing the searched information, because the user does not spend time in selecting and reviewing multiple search results as returned by the other prevalent technologies in 1999.

The hon’ble IPAB on examining the application held that while rejecting said patent application, the Respondent failed to appreciate the guidance provided by Hon’ble High court of Delhi in order passed in W.P. (C) 7/2014 & CM APPL. 40736/2019 dated December 12^th, 2019 as how to deal with inventions relating to computer related inventions (CRI). The IPAB maintained that the Hon’ble High court of Delhi in said order clearly stated that if the invention demonstrates a “technical effect” or a “technical contribution”, it is patentable even though it may be based on a computer program. The mere fact that a computer program is used for effectuating a part of the present invention, does not provide a bar to patentability.

The hon’ble board continued to hold that an invention must be examined as whole and the following factors are to be considered while deciding upon the patentability of such (computer related) inventions – i.e. (i) technical effect achieved by it, and its (ii) technical contribution. The hon’ble board categorically held that “..the CRI Guidelines, 2013 [issued by Indian Patent Office] provide cogent and coherent guidance in terms of the indicators of “technical effect”, as follows:

• Higher speed
• Reduced hard-disk access time
• More economical use of memory
• More efficient data base search strategy
• More effective data compression techniques
• Improved user interface
• Better control of robotic arm
• Improved reception/transmission of a radio signal

The technical solution provided by the appellant invention is to retrieve the detailed information about the result which the user is looking for in a localized manner (without using any bandwidth resources), and thereafter taking the user directly to the desired internet resource (utilising the said detailed information) e.g. to a website, rather than providing a list of results for user to choose from which was common in that era. As the user has accurately specified the required resource, the bandwidth so consumed is guaranteed to assure a successful result to the user. Thus, the present invention delays emitting of a final request to the internet by locally implementing preliminary selection steps to form a well construed query, which is finally emitted to the internet.

The present invention therefore falls under at least the following indicators of technical effect i.e. Higher speed, more economical use of memory and a more efficient data base search strategy, and is patentable .

Further, hon’ble IPAB board acknowledged that controller incorrectly identified relevant prior art with respect to the present invention as said prior art and present invention have different objectives and they therefore provide different solutions.

The Hon’ble IPAB board concluded that in light of the Hon’ble Delhi High Court’s direction that the Guidelines for grant of patents relating to the Computer Related Inventions are to be considered, along with the settled judicial precedents for granting the patent, as well as the fact that the present invention provides at least the aforesaid technical effects, the Patent ought to be granted in favour of the Appellant.

Thus, as long as an invention exhibits technical contribution to the state of the art and possesses a technical effect, the same shall not be denied patent protection only because it also employs a computer program.