SNF (Australia) Pty Ltd v Ciba Specialty Chemicals Water Treatments Limited

The case of SNF (Australia) Pty Ltd v Ciba Specialty Chemicals Water Treatments Limited involved a dispute regarding the validity of a patent application, specifically whether the invention lacked inventive step. The matter was heard by Dr S.D. Barker, Delegate of the Commissioner of Patents. The primary issue the court had to decide was whether the patent application met the criteria for inventive step, given the evidence presented by both parties. The court considered the evidence submitted by the parties, including affidavits and annexures, to assess whether the patent application had a lack of inventive step in light of prior art.

In its reasoning, the court noted that the opposition was heavily influenced by a previous decision and a Federal Court decision. The court accepted the concession made by Ciba that certain claims lacked inventive step, based on findings from the earlier decision. The main focus of the hearing was whether claim 1 also lacked inventive step. The court considered the relevance of the earlier findings and the new evidence to determine if the patent application met the inventive step criteria. The court concluded that the opposition succeeded in establishing that claim 1 lacked inventive step.

As a result of the court's decision, the opposition was successful. The court ordered that the costs of the opposition should follow the event, but it reduced the award of costs to SNF due to their failure to comply with a regulatory requirement to file a written summary of submissions by a specified date. Consequently, the patent application was not granted.