Delhi High Court Upholds Rejection Of Blackberry Patent On Colour-Coding Message Recipients Feature

The Delhi High Court has dismissed an appeal filed by Blackberry Limited, upholding the refusal of a patent application for a feature that colour-coded message recipients meant to help users distinguish between recipients before sending messages.

In a judgment pronounced on April 30, 2026, Justice Tejas Karia held that the invention was unpatentable under Section 3(k) of the Patents Act as a computer program per se and also lacked an inventive step.

The Court observed that the problem of selecting recipients is not a technical problem, but depends on the individual user, noting:

“A technical problem is universal in nature and technicality does not varied person to person. For example, noise in a communication system. Here every person faces the same noise problem if using the same communication system. But an error in sending a message with respect to recipient cannot be considered a technical problem because it depends on the person sending the message. It is not guaranteed that the said error committed by a person shall also be committed by another person..”

Blackberry had filed the appeal under Section 117A of the Patents Act challenging the refusal of its patent application titled “COLOUR DIFFERENTIATING A PORTION OF A TEXT MESSAGE SHOWN IN A LISTING ON A HANDHELD COMMUNICATION DEVICE”.

The company sought to set aside the Controller's orders dated October 11, 2019 and March 5, 2020 refusing the application.

It argued that the invention enabled users to distinguish recipients in a message by colour-coding names based on message address characteristics such as host names, and that it produced a technical effect beyond a mere algorithm.

The Controller, however, held that the claimed feature related to a non-technical data management method and that the invention was obvious in light of prior art.

On inventive step, the Court agreed with the Controller, who observed,

“However the difference in algorithms is superficial and obvious for skilled person once a skilled person view the problem of D2 with the solution proposed in D1.A skilled person can instantly decide that necessary changes can be made in the algorithm of D1 to create categories of approved and unapproved recipients using message attributes.”

The Court further agreed with the controller that the invention did not impact the functioning of the hardware. Holding that the contribution lay only in an algorithm, the court said:

“It is, therefore, derived that the actual contribution of the present invention solely lies in computer program / algorithm as such. The only hardware which is disclosed is the wireless communication device, which is just a mobile terminal device, that executes program in a conventional or normal manner devoid from any interaction beyond the normal hardware-software interaction. Further, the problem being addressed relates to an administrative / business solution for data management."

The court also noted that the feature does not eliminate errors, observing:

“Even after the present invention is implemented, the sender still may commit an error, if the recipients having the same name are more in number. For example, if the recipients having same name are five in number, the user shall have to remember the all five different colours corresponding to five different recipients. In this case, the sender still may commit the same error, if failed to remember the assigned colours.”

Accordingly, the court held that the subject matter fell within the exclusion under Section 3(k) of the Act and was not patentable.

Dismissing the appeal, the Court upheld the Controller's orders refusing the patent application.