Parallel imports and exhaustion
Section 107A of the Patents Act follows international exhaustion, but the exact scope of 'duly authorised under the law' remains genuinely debated with limited judicial precedent.
Finin2min Summary — in 2 Minutes
Section 107A of the Patents Act follows international exhaustion, but the exact scope of 'duly authorised under the law' remains genuinely debated with limited judicial precedent.
Official source and legal ownership
What this covers
Parallel imports - genuine goods first sold abroad by or with the patentee/trademark owner's authorisation, then imported into India without the Indian rights holder's separate consent - raise the question of exhaustion: whether the rights holder's control over the goods is "exhausted" once first sold, even outside India.
How Section 107A works, and where it remains unsettled
Section 107A(b) of the Patents Act, as amended in 2005, provides that importing a patented product from a person "duly authorised under the law" to produce, sell or distribute it is not infringement - reflecting international exhaustion in principle. However, whether "duly authorised under the law" refers to the exporting country's law (a broader, more import-friendly reading) or Indian law specifically (a narrower reading protecting the Indian patentee's control) remains genuinely debated, with sparse judicial precedent definitively resolving the question.
Why it matters
Because this interpretive question has not been conclusively settled by Indian courts, a party relying on Section 107A(b) to import genuine patented goods from abroad should treat the analysis as fact-specific and genuinely contestable, not assume a blanket international-exhaustion defence is guaranteed to succeed.