In a patent infringement suit filed by Syngenta Limited against GSP Crop Science Pvt. Ltd., the Delhi High Court appointed a Scientific Advisor to assess the claims of infringement. With the consent of both parties, a two-tier confidentiality club was formed based on a mutually agreed upon Terms of Reference (ToR) agreement. The two-tier Confidentiality Club was established as per the rules of the Delhi High Court Intellectual Property Division Rules, 2022. Accordingly, Tier-I included the Scientific Advisor and up to two external counsels from each party; and Tier-II included the members of Tier-I and up to two representatives from each party. The ToR agreed between the parties also stated that all the documents, information, records, or samples could only be shared within this two-tier confidentiality structure. In the second tier, Dr. Whitton, a former employee of Syngenta was appointed and GSP denied him access to documents collected during the scientific advisor’s plant inspection. According to GSP, there exists a high risk of confidential documents being leaked as Dr. Whitton was residing abroad.
The Court held that the ToR stated that records verified by the Scientific Advisor would be available to members of the confidentiality club in a sealed cover, with the condition that the confidential information could only be used for the purposes of the present case. The Court further stated that if GSP had concerns about sensitive information, it should have explicitly restricted access to such data in the ToR. The Court held that there should be proper compliance with the agreed-upon ToR and directed that Dr. Whitton be granted access to the documents.
Source: Syngenta and Anr v. GSP Crop Science [(IA 44420/2024), CS(COMM) 87/2020)]