Patentability of Algorithmic Processes in India: The Battle Between Blackberry and The Controller of Patents

On 30th August 2024, the Delhi High Court (DHC) delivered two landmark decisions that have drawn attention to the treatment of software-based inventions in Indian patent law. The center of these ruling was the appeals filed by the Blackberry Limited against the rejection of their two patent applications. The first application, titled “Administration of Wireless System”, was rejected on the ground that the claims pertained to a set of instructions and software without inventive hardware feature. While, the second application, titled “Auto-Selection of Media Files”, was rejected for being related to algorithms and computer program per se. This paper aims to examine the court’s reasoning in both cases to assess the consistency of the decisions. By examining these decisions, the paper look into the Indian jurisprudence in dealing with the patent claims for software and algorithms, thereby throw light on the evolving patentability standards in India for AI and software-driven innovations.