Balance is the cornerstone of SEP disputes: Justice Prathiba M Singh
August 23, 2025
Justice Prathiba M. Singh calls for balanced frameworks in India’s evolving SEP regime.
New Delhi, 23 August 2025: At a National Conference on Standard Essential Patent (SEP), jointly hosted by FICCI and ICRIER, Hon’ble Justice Prathiba M. Singh of the High Court of Delhi underlined that India’s SEP Jurisprudence has matured by prioritising a balance between the rights of SEP holders and the concerns of implementers.
Recounting India’s judicial journey since the country’s first telecom SEP case in the early 2010s, Justice Singh highlighted that established intellectual property (IP) law principles have guided SEP litigation in India, rather than creating a separate class of rules. "SEP disputes were not treated as a different breed. Courts consistently applied settled IP principles while balancing interests,” she said.
Calling the creation of a dedicated IP Division in the High Court of Delhi a “watershed moment,” Justice Singh noted that the IP Division’s rules of procedure have since become a template for IP matters across India. Emphasising India’s growing importance in global IP adjudication, she added: “India today is seen as a neutral forum with a large consumer base that cannot be ignored.”
Justice Singh also flagged the need for startup-oriented solutions, drawing attention to challenges faced by smaller companies in monetising IP assets. “A national patent pool for startups and MSMEs could be one possible method to safeguard their interests and ensure affordable access to SEPs,” she suggested.
Speaking before Justice Singh’s address, Dr. Yogesh Pai, Head: Patents and Treaties Law Section, WIPO, contextualised India’s challenges within the global framework. He highlighted the WIPO SEP Strategy released in 2024, which positioned the UN agency as a convenor and service provider in SEP disputes.
“WIPO’s role is to provide neutral platforms for collaboration and resolution,” Dr. Pai said, underscoring services such as arbitration and mediation, alongside new tools within the Patentscope database, and a curated SEP case law collection, which includes decisions on SEPs from Indian Courts.
Building on this, Shri Sanjiv, Joint Secretary, DPIIT, highlighted the strong link between patents and innovation, noting a surge in patent filings by Indian startups over the past five years. He cautioned, however, that a large stock of public sector IP remains underutilised.
“The DRDO website lists 30,000 patents available for free use, but they remain largely untapped,” Sanjiv said, underlining the need for collaborative models that ensure India’s inventions are commercialised and scaled both domestically and globally.
Prof. Dr. Unnat P. Pandit, Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, urged India’s SEP discourse to move beyond a litigation-first lens. He advocated a “3D perspective” integrating law, economics, and technology to build India-centric frameworks.
“Today, discussions are dominated by legal battles. But to build a healthy SEP ecosystem, innovation economists and technologists must be equal participants in shaping FRAND rate methodologies,” Prof. Pandit said. Citing the fintech sector, he pointed out how India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has transformed digital payments: “To replicate that success with SEPs, technology must meet people’s needs, and our rate models must reflect India-centric realities.”
He also flagged CGPDTM-led initiatives, including sector-specific policy and progress roundtables on technical and economic dimensions of SEPs, aimed at developing transparent, evidence-led benchmarks for future licensing practices.
In a one-of-a-kind convening, this conference brought together the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), India’s standards and telecom ecosystem: TSDSI, Bharat 6G Alliance, and C-DOT, alongside the judiciary, global licensors and implementers, device makers, network vendors, startups/MSMEs, economists, technologists and academia.
The shared takeaway was clear: legal and economic models must align with India’s realities so that technology leads and policy enables; converting innovation into products, markets and scale, thereby accelerating the march towards Viksit Bharat@2047.
Together, the interventions highlighted the need for structural reforms in India’s SEP regime — with Justice Singh underscoring judicial balance and startup protection, Shri Sanjiv emphasising commercialisation pathways and utilisation of public-sector IP for innovation, and Prof. Pandit calling for innovation-driven, evidence-led FRAND methodologies.
The conference concluded with a shared vision: India’s SEP journey must integrate law, economics, and innovation capacity to build frameworks that not only resolve disputes but also unlock growth and competitiveness for Indian enterprises in the global technology ecosystem.