Surrender and Revocation

A start-up patents a product, then pivots to a different business. Keeping the patent alive costs money every year, so the founders want to give it up. Can they just stop paying, or is there a formal way to surrender, and can anyone object? On the other side, a small manufacturer is sued for infringing a patent it believes should never have been granted. Can it ask a court to cancel the patent? Surrender is the patentee's own exit; revocation is the exit forced on the patentee. The Act treats them in the same chapter.

In two minutes

A patentee may offer to surrender a patent under s.63, which the Controller accepts only after publication and hearing any opposition; a patent may be revoked on a petition or counter-claim before the High Court on the grounds in s.64, or by the Controller or the Central Government in the specific cases in ss.25, 65, 66 and 85.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Intellectual Property Laws on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.