Managing a patent portfolio for a large company means living with this reality: between the moment an invention is made and the moment an application is filed, things change. Inventors move on. They retire. In some cases, they die.

The question is what happens to the filing.

The Patent Office's traditional answer — produce a fresh assignment deed, from the heirs if necessary — was a procedural demand with no statutory foundation. A Delhi High Court ruling from December 2025 has closed that chapter, and in doing so, has removed an uncertainty that has quietly complicated employer patent filings in India for years.

The Rule the Patent Office Was Applying — and Why It Was Wrong

Section 7(2) of the Patents Act, 1970 requires an applicant who is not the inventor to demonstrate a right to file. The provision is deliberately open-ended: it prescribes no specific form for that proof.

Section 68 — a separate provision — governs the formal assignment of a granted patent. It requires a written deed and operates post-grant only.

Nippon Steel Corporation filed Indian Patent Application No. 202117029591 for a high-strength steel sheet, naming four employees as inventors. Three signed Form 1. The fourth, Mr. Sano, had died before the filing date. Nippon Steel submitted its employment agreements — which vested all employee inventions in the company — and its corporate IP policy. The Patent Office rejected the application. Employment contracts were too general. A specific deed was required. For a deceased inventor, fresh paperwork from the heirs was mandatory.

In so ruling, the Patent Office had imported Section 68's post-grant formalities into a filing-stage provision that does not call for them. That was the error the Court corrected.

What the Court Found

Section 7(2) asks a simple question: does the applicant have the right to file? It does not specify how that right must be demonstrated.

Employment agreements with clear IP vesting clauses answer that question. Corporate IP policies confirm it. No invention-specific assignment deed is required under a provision that prescribes no particular form.

And for a deceased inventor: the documentation executed during his lifetime suffices. There is no legal basis — none — for requiring fresh assignments from legal heirs at the filing stage.

Why This Actually Matters

The Patent Office's approach had created a procedural trap with no exit. When an inventor died, the company faced an application it could not complete and a statutory route it could not satisfy. The ruling closes that trap.

More broadly, it aligns India's patent filing practice with how corporate IP ownership actually works. Inventions vest in employers by contract at the moment they are created — not through a separate deed executed at the moment of filing. The Court has recognised that reality.

The Takeaway

If your company files patents based on employee inventions, review your employment agreements and IP policies. Where those documents clearly vest invention rights in the employer, they satisfy Section 7(2) — at filing, through employment transitions, and even when an inventor is no longer alive.

The procedural barrier the Patent Office had been erecting was not in the statute. The Court has said so.