Nagpur: The CIPR and DPIIT-IPR Chair of MNLU, Nagpur organised workshop on ‘Overview of the Designs Act, 2000’ and ‘Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout Design and IP Regime in India’ recently. The program was conducted under the dynamic leadership of Prof. (Dr.) Vijender Kumar, Vice-Chancellor, Maharashtra National Law University (MNLU), Nagpur.
Dr. Ragini P. Khubalkar, Associate Professor of Law, Head of CIPR & DPIIT-IPR Chair, MNLU, Nagpur welcomed the participants to the session and briefly introduced the theme of the program. Dr. Ragini emphasised the need to understand, ‘The Designs Act, 2000’ and ‘Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout Design Act and it’s application in India’.
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Dr. Abhijeet Rohee, Assistant Professor of Law, MNLU Mumbai was the resource person for the workshop. The session started with warm welcome. He provided a quick overview of industrial designs. He then turned his attention to India’s industrial design history, began a long time ago with the passage of the Patents and Designs Act in 1911, followed by the Patents Act in 1970. In the future, India joined the WTO and passed The Designs Act 2000 to comply with TRIPS.
Following that he gave an overview of articles 25 and 26 of the TRIPS agreement. The general time frame for Industrial Design protection is 10 years, subject to The Designs Act 2000’s stipulations. The definition of design under the Designs Act was then thoroughly addressed. He explained that design is the fusion of form and function. He then turned to the requirement for ID protection. He listed various reasons for the same.
Dr Rohee then went over the goals for protecting Industrial Designs. The goal of awarding an exclusive right in an industrial design can be summed up as offering the chance to profit from investments made and aesthetic advancements produced in order to further general research and development of technical or utilitarian goods. Then he went into great length about the topics of the drawings and what was NOT included in them. He next turned to the IDs that cannot be registered.
The next session of the seminar was addressed by Dr. Ankit Singh, Assistant Professor of Law, HNLU, Raipur. Dr. Singh began by outlining the purpose of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Designs Act of 2000. The owner has the right under the Layout-Designs of Integrated Circuits Act to prevent the copying and commercial exploitation of an original layout-design of an Integrated Circuit. The owner can enforce his rights under the Layout-Designs of Integrated Circuits Act by suing the infringing party. The purpose of the legislation is to preserve the IPR of original design with the goal of rewarding the inventor for the study and effort performed to create a new and unique design.
He also discussed various concepts related to the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Designs Act of 2000, such as an integrated circuit (IC), also known as a chip, microchip, or microelectronic circuit, which is a semiconductor wafer on which thousands or millions of tiny resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors are fabricated. He defined design as “the features of shape, configuration, pattern, ornament, or composition of lines or colours applied to any article, whether in two dimensions, three dimensions, or both dimensions, by any industrial process or means, whether manual, mechanical, or chemical, separate or combined.”
He also provided an outline of the requirements and registration method of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Design Act of 2000. He went into detail about the Act’s Offences, explaining that they fall into the following categories:
• Infringement, falsely claiming that a layout-design is registered
• Incorrectly claiming that a location is associated with the Registry
• Falsifying entries in the register; and violations committed by businesses
• Acts undertaken outside of India that would constitute a crime under the Act in India may be penalised if they were assisted
The size and processing power of an integrated circuit are both determined by the transistor arrangement or transistor topography on the semiconductor integrated circuit. Because of this, the transistor layout design is a very significant and distinctive kind of intellectual property that differs significantly from other types such as copyrights, trademarks, and patents. He elaborated various examples related to the topic and answered all the questions raised by the participants.
The workshop was conducted in virtual mode and moderated by Shweta Kulkarni and Trupti Kokate, Research Assistants, DPIIT-IPR Chair, MNLU, Nagpur. The seminar was registered by more than 100 participants including academicians, research scholars, and students.
