Who owns an invention developed within a university or research institution – the individual inventor or the institution?
The answer cannot safely be determined merely by asking who conceived the invention, who supervised the research, or whose facilities were used. Patent ownership can turn on the institution’s intellectual property policy, the status of the researcher, contractual arrangements, funding conditions, assignments and, importantly, what happened to the rights after the invention was created.
The Bombay High Court’s recent decision in Dr. Tarkeshwar Chandrakant Patil v. Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay & Ors., pronounced on 8 September 2026, provides an unusually detailed examination of these issues. The dispute concerned Indian Patent Application No. 2808/MUM/2013 for an invention titled “An Apparatus and a Method for In-Vivo Power Generation.”
The case is particularly useful because the Court did not proceed on a broad proposition that an inventor must own his invention, nor did it accept the opposite proposition that research carried out within an institution necessarily belongs permanently to that institution. Instead, it examined the actual chain of title: IIT Bombay’s IP Policy, agreements executed by the inventors, and a later worldwide Deed of Assignment.
That distinction is important for universities, R&D organizations, startups and companies managing inventions created by researchers and employees.
How the ownership dispute developed?
Dr. Tarkeshwar Patil joined IIT Bombay as a Research Assistant in 2008. He subsequently entered its Ph.D. programme and continued research that eventually formed an integral part of his doctoral thesis. The invention underlying the patent application concerned generation of power for devices implanted in the human body.
The Indian patent application was filed by IIT Bombay in August 2013, with Dr. Patil identified as the prime inventor alongside two other named inventors. A corresponding U.S. application followed.
The relationship between Dr. Patil and his Ph.D. guide later deteriorated, including disagreements concerning prosecution of the patent applications. By 2017, IIT Bombay had indicated that it would not bear further costs for pursuing the U.S. application. The matter was escalated within IIT Bombay’s institutional mechanism. A development in July 2017 ultimately became decisive.
IIT Bombay, acting through its Dean of Research and Development, executed a Deed of Assignment in favour of Dr. Patil. The document transferred IIT Bombay’s rights in the invention and addressed patent applications in the United States and other countries. The U.S. applications were subsequently amended, and two U.S. patents were eventually granted exclusively to Dr. Patil. The Indian application took a very different course.
A dispute continued over whether the 2017 assignment transferred the Indian rights as well. The Patent Office’s records reflected changes in the identity of the applicant, and Dr. Patil ultimately filed a pre-grant opposition under Section 25(1)(a) of the Patents Act alleging wrongful obtainment. The matter remained unresolved for years before reaching the Bombay High Court.
Inventorship and ownership should not be treated as the same question
One of the practical lessons from this dispute is the need to distinguish inventorship from ownership.
Inventorship concerns the person or persons responsible for the inventive contribution. Ownership concerns who holds the proprietary rights in the invention or patent application. The two may initially coincide, but they need not remain with the same person.
An inventor may assign patent rights to an employer, university, startup or another entity. An institution may initially acquire ownership under an applicable IP policy or contractual arrangement and subsequently assign those rights back to an inventor or onward to another party. This is substantially what the High Court found had occurred here.
The Court held that IIT Bombay’s 2012 IP Policy applied to Dr. Patil and the invention. It also found that a Revenue Sharing Agreement executed in December 2013 expressly confirmed acceptance of that policy and recognized IIT Bombay’s ownership of the relevant IP. The Court therefore rejected Dr. Patil’s argument that he was outside the policy merely because a particular IP Policy Agreement Form had not been signed.
At that stage, therefore, the Court’s finding was that the rights had vested in IIT Bombay. But ownership did not remain there.
The 2017 assignment changed the chain of title
The central issue was the legal effect of the Deed of Assignment executed on 3 July 2017. The Court examined its wording and IIT Bombay’s IP Policy. Significantly, the policy authorized the Dean, R&D to grant waivers to creators from application of the IP Policy. The Court found that the Dean had acted within that institutional authority when executing the assignment.
The assignment transferred IIT Bombay’s full and exclusive right, title and interest in the invention to Dr. Patil. IIT Bombay later argued that the document related essentially to the United States and did not transfer rights in India.
The Court rejected that interpretation. Looking at the language of the document as a whole, it found that the assignment covered not only the United States but the rights relating to the invention and applications in other jurisdictions as well. At the relevant stage, India and the United States were the jurisdictions in which applications had been filed. The Court accordingly held that the Indian rights had also been assigned.
This part of the judgment has considerable practical importance for patent transactions. A patent assignment is not merely an administrative document used to change the applicant’s name on a patent-office record. It is an instrument affecting title to an intellectual property asset. Its wording, territorial reach, identification of the underlying invention and applications, authority of the assignor, and interaction with earlier agreements can become decisive years later.
Did IIT Bombay’s continued prosecution amount to wrongful obtainment?
The dispute also required the Court to consider Section 25(1)(a) of the Patents Act. That provision permits a pre-grant opposition on the ground that the applicant, or the person through whom the applicant claims, wrongfully obtained the invention or part of it from the opponent or a person through whom the opponent claims.
The Controller had taken the view that wrongful obtainment had not been established because the original application had not been filed without Dr. Patil’s knowledge. The Controller also relied upon an employer-employee analysis in dealing with entitlement to the invention.
The High Court considered that approach insufficient for the facts before it. The critical event was the subsequent assignment. Even if IIT Bombay had originally held title, the Court found that it had later consciously transferred that title to Dr. Patil. Continuing to pursue the application in IIT Bombay’s own name after that transfer was therefore treated by the Court as wrongful for purposes of the dispute before it.
This is an important distinction. The Court was not laying down that university ownership of inventions created by researchers is inherently wrongful. In fact, its reasoning confirmed that IIT Bombay initially owned the IP under the applicable arrangements.
The problem arose because the institution subsequently assigned those rights and then continued to pursue the Indian patent application notwithstanding that assignment.
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Institutional IP policies matter but so do subsequent contracts
Universities and research organizations commonly maintain policies dealing with ownership of inventions, use of institutional resources, patent filing, commercialization and revenue sharing.
Such policies can have substantial legal significance, as this judgment demonstrates. The Bombay High Court expressly found IIT Bombay’s IP Policy applicable. The policy covered students, faculty, staff, researchers and others associated with the institution, and contemplated institutional ownership of IP produced by IIT Bombay personnel, subject to specified exceptions and waiver mechanisms.
But an IP policy cannot be considered in isolation from subsequent legally operative documents.
Here, the same institutional framework that supported IIT Bombay’s original ownership also empowered the Dean, R&D to grant a waiver. Once that authority was exercised and the worldwide assignment executed, the ownership position changed.
For IP practitioners, this illustrates why a proper title review should ordinarily examine the complete documentary history, rather than relying only on the original employment relationship or the applicant name appearing in the patent register. An IP policy may establish the starting position. An assignment can change it.
The case also exposes the cost of unresolved chain-of-title disputes
The ownership question was only one troubling feature of the case. The Indian application had been filed in August 2013. The First Examination Report was issued only in July 2019. During the intervening period, Dr. Patil had at certain points been reflected as the applicant, only for the record to revert to IIT Bombay. The dispute then moved through opposition proceedings, hearings and multiple approaches to the High Court.
By the time the Bombay High Court delivered its judgment in September 2026, approximately thirteen years had elapsed since filing.
The Court was notably critical of how the proceedings had been administered. It observed that the ownership issue should have been addressed on the basis of the documentary record and expressed concern that a substantial portion of the available patent term had already been consumed while the application remained unresolved.
This is not merely an administrative concern. Uncertainty over ownership can affect prosecution decisions, licensing discussions, enforcement strategy, investment and technology commercialization. A prospective licensee or investor conducting IP due diligence will ordinarily want a defensible chain of title. Where competing parties assert ownership of the same patent rights, the commercial consequences can extend well beyond the patent prosecution file.
The Court recognized Dr. Patil as the owner but did not grant the patent
The precise outcome of the judgment should also be understood. The Bombay High Court held that the 2012 IIT Bombay IP Policy initially applied and that the relevant rights had vested in IIT Bombay. It then held that the July 2017 Deed of Assignment validly transferred those rights to Dr. Patil, including the rights in India.
The Court allowed his pre-grant opposition under Section 25(1)(a), recognized him as the inventor and applicant, held IIT Bombay’s continued pursuit of the application in its own name after the assignment to be wrongful, and set aside the Controller’s July 2025 order.
The patent application was restored to the Controller with Dr. Patil substituted as applicant. The Controller was directed to examine the application on its merits under Sections 14 and 15, after hearing him on the outstanding examination objections, and to pass a reasoned order within eight weeks. The Controller General was also requested to assign the matter to a senior officer who had not previously dealt with it.
Importantly, the High Court did not decide that the patent must be granted. The judgment expressly records that nothing in it constitutes an opinion on the merits of the patent application. Patent ownership and patentability remain separate questions.
What universities, companies and inventors should take from the decision!
The broader lesson from Dr. Tarkeshwar Chandrakant Patil v. IIT Bombay is not that inventors automatically own university-generated inventions, nor that institutions automatically retain them. Ownership must be traced.
For universities and R&D organizations, that means maintaining clear IP policies, ensuring that researchers understand and accept the relevant terms, documenting assignments and waivers carefully, and ensuring that patent-office records remain consistent with subsequent transfers of title.
For inventors and researchers, it means understanding that being named as an inventor does not necessarily establish ownership. Employment terms, institutional policies, research agreements, funding arrangements and assignments may determine where proprietary rights ultimately reside.
For companies acquiring or licensing university-originated technology, the case provides an equally important due-diligence lesson. The applicant named on the face of a patent application should not automatically be assumed to establish the entire chain of title. Earlier assignments, inventor agreements, institutional policies, waivers and subsequent transfers may all require examination.
The Bombay High Court’s decision ultimately turned on documentary title. IIT Bombay’s policy initially supported institutional ownership; the institution then exercised the authority available within that framework to transfer its rights to the inventor. Once that transfer occurred, the Court held that it had to be given legal effect.
That is perhaps the most useful professional takeaway from the case: in patent ownership disputes, the question is not simply who invented the technology or where the research occurred. The complete chain of title and the legal instruments that created, transferred or relinquished those rights must be examined.
This article is intended for general information on Indian patent law and should not be treated as legal advice concerning ownership, inventorship, assignment or any particular patent application.