Statutory inconsistency and jurisdictional conflict between the Controller of Patents and the Competition Commission of India

Abstract

The Indian regulatory system has long been plagued with statutory overlaps and jurisdictional conflicts, particularly between the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and other sectoral regulators. The Supreme Court in 2018 sought to balance sectoral technical expertise with the mandate of the competition regulator, developing a novel ‘two-step’ test wherein the sectoral regulator exercises the primary jurisdiction and determines the jurisdictional facts, after which the competition regulator is allowed to exercise jurisdiction. In the aftermath of this decision, a 2016 judgment that had exhaustively demarcated the powers of the Controller of Patents and the CCI was challenged on the basis of the novel two-step test. In 2020, the Single Judge ruled in favour of the validity of the 2016 judgment and awarded jurisdiction to the CCI in preference to the Controller.

In this paper, the author examines a series of cases, along with the statutory construction and the legislative history of the Patents Act, 1970 and the Competition Act, 2002 to analyse the jurisdictional conflict. The paper concludes that the Controller, within the scope of its powers, is incapable of addressing the anti-competitive conduct of a patent holder. The Patents Act, 1970 was drafted with the cognizance that an independent commission shall be required for the regulation of anti-competitive conduct.