Delhi High Court Permits Recording of Evidence by Live Transcription in Patent Infringement Case

Delhi High Court Permits Recording of Evidence by Live Transcription in Patent Infringement Case

The Delhi High Court has permitted recording of evidence by live transcription in a patent infringement suit. The single judge Justice Prathiba M Singh passed the order in a suit filed by a US company named Communication Components Antenna Inc against three related companies based out of New Delhi, Germany and China.

In the present case, the patent is titled as, ‘Asymmetrical Beams for Spectrum Efficiency’ which relates to a method and apparatus enabling the increase in subscriber capacity and enhancing performance of a base station.

The Defendants are three related companies based out of Germany, New Delhi and China. The Defendants had filled a counter-claim seeking revocation of the patent under Section 104 of the Patents Act, 1970.

The Court noted that the patent itself was valid till 17 March, 2017. In terms of the High Court of Delhi Rules Governing Patent Suits, 2022 (Patent Rules) if a patent has less than a five-year term left, the Court can resort to summary adjudication so as to expedite the matter, noted the judge.

The Court therefore, issued the following directions:

(a) Both the parties shall review their respective expert affidavits and shall file the final affidavits of their experts both in respect of infringement and invalidity within a period of four weeks.

(b) Considering that the defendants are continuing to sell their antennae in India and there has been no injunction, a list of the assets of the defendants along with their valuation, be filed on record within four weeks.

(c) Parties are permitted to file the evidence of one person on non-technical aspects including damages.

(d) Evidence shall be recorded by the Court, initially, of both the experts and, thereafter, of the witnesses on non-technical aspects including damages.

(e) The evidence shall be recorded before the Court and live transcription of the same is permitted. The costs of the same shall be borne by both parties equally. The transcription agency shall, however, be engaged by the plaintiff. One to two personnel from the transcription agency are permitted to be present in Court to enable live transcription.

(f) The cost estimates shall be exchanged between the parties for the transcription,

The Court fixed the time for cross-examination of technical witnesses to 90 minutes and of non-technical witnesses to 60 minutes.

Accordingly, the Court listed the matter for 20th and 22nd September, 2023.

Senior Advocate Gaurav Pachnanda represented the plaintiff along with Advocates Sidhant Goel, Mohit Goel, Deepankar Mishra, Aditya Goel and Avni Sharma.

Senior Advocate Sandeep Sethi along with Advocates Manisha Singh, Abhai Pandey, Varun Sharma, Swati Mittal and Gautam Kumar appeared for the defendants.