Forbidden

The Delhi High Court has allowed Dr. Wobben to withdraw all three of his appeals which he had filed earlier against the orders passed by the Madras bench of the IPAB revoking twelve patents granted to Dr. Wobben. The Court further ordered Dr. Wobben to pay costs worth Rs. 1,00,000 in respect of each of the three appeals, with 50,000 going to Enercon and 50,000 to the government per appeal.

Earlier Enercon had filed revocation petitions before the Intellectual Property Appellate Board seeking revocation of the patents granted to Dr. Wobben. By IPAB’s orders, these revocation petitions were granted and the 12 patents granted to Dr. Wobben were revoked. Following this, Dr. Wobben had filed 3 appeals in the Delhi High Court against the IPAB’s orders. After extensive arguments put forth by Enercon questioning the jurisdiction of the Delhi High Court to hear an appeal against the orders of the Madras bench of the IPAB, the Delhi High Court finally decided to take charge of the matter.

Before the Delhi High Court could finally decide and pass a judgement on the matter, Dr. Wobben withdrew all three of his appeals. Justice Gita Mittal awarded the costs on the ground of waste of judicial time and said that it was justified to award costs demanded by the respondent. The Hon’ble judge said: “’However, it cannot be denied that valuable judicial time has been expended on hearing prolonged arguments on the respondents’ preliminary objection which were raised at the first instance with regard to maintainability of the three writ petitions before this court. The prayer of the respondents for award of costs appears to be justified.’