In the matter of
Application background
The patent application was titled "Scheduling in a High-Performance Computing System" and was intended for high-performance computing systems (HPCs) that scientists and engineers use for modelling, simulating and analysing complex physical or algorithmic phenomena. The applicant highlighted before the court that a typical HPC machine design consists of numerous HPC clusters, the scalability of which was a problem in prior art due to constraints created by lack of sufficient bandwidth and the presence of unnecessary components that reduce a HPC system's reliability. According to the applicant, the claimed invention addressed these problems by disclosing a method for scheduling that reduces the time requirements associated with scheduling a job for execution in a HPC system, resulting in minimised computational demands.
During prosecution, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) refused the application under Section 3(k) of the Patents Act, reasoning that its claims did not outline novel hardware features. Surprisingly, the IPO relied on the 2016 Computer Related Inventions Examination Guidelines - even though these were updated in 2017 - which required that hardware features be incorporated for applications related to computer-related inventions. The IPO concluded that the invention was related to algorithmic and computational operations, and therefore its contribution was solely in software and the claims lacked hardware features.
On appeal, after analysing the invention involved in the patent application, the court disagreed with the IPO's position. It reaffirmed its judgments from
The court set aside the IPO's order and remanded the matter back to the office for fresh examination with a direction that the IPO should not insist on a novel hardware requirement. The DHC judgment further solidifies the position of the Indian courts while assessing computer related inventions.
To read the court order, please click here.
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