The Himachal Pradesh High Court recently issued ad-interim injunctions to a patentee, Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), against five Indian generic companies (the defendants).
BI filed separate infringement suits against the companies and sought interim injunctions to restrain them from violating its patent rights during the course of the suits. BI argued that a preliminary injunction should be granted in its favour because:
the subject patent was old, well established, highly commercially successful and extensively useful;
the patent had been granted in favour of BI following the
substantive provisions of the Patents Act 1970; and
the defendants had raised no pre-grant opposition, post-grant opposition or objection to the quality and strength of the subject patent. They had only filed revocation proceedings a day before