Law of IPR CRE 6

Al Swamy - 1, a ship used in the export of meat, amongst other things collapsed at the Cochin
Shipyard. Unfortunately, the freezer system broke down due to the capsizing and the meat started
contaminating the water. Mr. Joseph, a naval architect, came up with an ingenious method to
raise the ship quickly, applying the principle of buoyancy. He set up an apparatus that ejected a
stream of water through an ejector and the suction tube in the said ejector introduced ping pong
balls into the stream of water. This apparatus was placed on a salvage ship that was connected to
the sunken ship by a tube, which tube facilitated the entry of ping pong balls into the hull of the
sunken ship. The tube contained a method of coating an adhesive layer on the balls once they
reached the hull so that the balls adhere together and consequently the cumulative buoyancy
raised the ship to float on the surface of water. 50 million ping pong balls were ejected into the
hull of Al Swamy - 1 thus, until when it lifted itself back to the surface of water.
Mr. Joseph later applied for patent for this invention of his, for the apparatus and for the method,
citing the improvements to prior art, such as how his invention was successful in eliminating of
the requirement of buoyant substances to be of the same diameter, thus saving space; ease of
handling at rough seas, which was unattainable in prior art; solving the issue of inability to
obtain continuity in flow of the buoyant substance to the hull in the prior art, etc It was
determined that these improvements were not foreseeable in the current state of art to a
PHOSITA. However, the patent examiner, while having dinner with his 4 year old son, chanced
to glance through a cartoon strip that the son was reading, where he found Donald Duck &
nephews attempting to raise a sunken ship by stuffing ping pong balls into it through a tube. In
the FER, the patent office indicated to the same and noted that invention lacked novelty, as the
invention had already been contemplated in the comic strip. In reply, Mr. Joseph brought to the
attention of the Controller that the disclosure in the comic strip did not explain enough about the
invention for it to be enabled to a PHOSITA and hence novelty was not lost. The controller,
however, did not grant the patent and currently Mr. Joseph has filed an appeal against the order.
 Appendix 1: The Invention

Appendix 2: The Comic Strip