A written statement can bristle with invalidity grounds under Sections 64 and 107 — but grounds are not arguments. In Neway Industries Pvt. Ltd. v. Mold-Tek Packaging Ltd. [FAO(COMM) 235/2025 & 241/2025], a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court drew a crisp line between pleading a ground and pressing it, and reminded litigants that an objection lives or dies on claim mapping and reasoning, not on its mere appearance in the pleadings.
Two patents, two outcomes
Mold-Tek sued Neway over two patents — IN’417 (“Tamper-Evident Leak Proof Pail Closure System”) and IN’724 (“Tamper Proof Lid Having Spout”). The Commercial Court confirmed the interim injunction for IN’417 (prima facie infringement; invalidity challenge without substance) but vacated it for IN’724. Both sides appealed.
Plead it and press it — or lose it
On IN’417, although the written statement cited several prior art documents under Section 64(1)(e) and (f), the written submissions had narrowed the challenge to a single document (IN’127), and even there offered no comparative claim analysis. The Division Bench held that what matters is what is actually urged and crystallised in written submissions: “once the submissions are reduced to writing, it is ordinarily not open to the party to, in appeal, ventilate issues which are not captured in the written submissions.” A bare reference to prior art, without a clear mapping of claim elements to the disclosure, cannot sustain a novelty or inventive-step objection. The injunction for IN’417 stood.
On IN’724, the Bench faulted the Commercial Court instead — for gesturing vaguely at “prior art” and “similar products,” discussing only Mold-Tek’s own earlier patent IN’276 without comparing the claims (and overlooking that IN’276 was a spout per se while IN’724 claimed a lid incorporating a spout). It flagged two conceptual errors: conflating infringement with invalidity (a patent’s vulnerability to revocation does not, by itself, negate infringement), and reversing the burden of proof (once the patentee makes out a prima facie case of infringement, the burden shifts to the defendant to mount a credible validity challenge). The order vacating the IN’724 injunction was set aside, the injunction revived, and validity remanded.
Why it matters
This is, at bottom, a discipline case — and a useful one for both bench and bar. For challengers, it is a warning that a scattergun written statement is worthless without a focused, element-by-element claim chart pressed home in written submissions; for courts, that invalidity and infringement are distinct enquiries with distinct burdens. The decision dovetails with this blog’s coverage of claim construction in Canva v. RxPrism and the credible-challenge standard in Novo Nordisk: at every stage, the claim is the unit of analysis, and the mapping is the work.
Sources & further reading: Sections 64 & 107; Lava International v. Ericsson (anticipation).
Educational note: This case summary is general information, not legal advice.