LegalCrystal – Blog

Dear Readers,

This is about Rent Act. Today under Rent Act I would like to give you few tips which you need to know as a Tenant or as a Landlord or to take special care as a prospective Landlord/Tenant:

First I would like to brief you about the history and purpose of the Act in few sentences which I narrate from the books I referred:

The Historical background of the Act is that during the Second World War there was acute problem to find accommodation for the officials transferred from one place to another and owners of the buildings exploited the situation to their advantage. In order to curb such tendencies legislation was brought in throughout the country. The Subject comes under the State List of the Constitution of India. The then Mysore State enacted the Mysore House Rent and Accommodation Control Act 1951 which was replaced by the Karnataka Rent Control Act 1961. It was brought into force for a period of ten years as temporary measure but has been extended from time to time till 31/12/2001. The Karnataka Rent Act 1961 is replaced by the Karnataka Rent Act 1999. It has been passed by the Karnataka State Legislature and published in Karnataka Gazette and it received the assent of the President of India on 22/11/2001. It has come into force from 31/12/2001. The Karnataka Rent Rules 2001 are framed under Section 66(1) of the Act which came into force from the date of their publication in the official Gazette. Thus the Act and the Rules came into force from 31/12/2001 in the State of Karnataka by repealing the 1961 Act.

Patents could be for process or product. If a patent is taken out for a process in arriving at a known product, any other person may take out a patent for another process for arriving at the same known product. But when a patent is taken out for a new product which was not known before and the patent describes one specific process in making the new product, then the patent is entitled to protection against any other process in making the same product. Any person who even adopts a different process in arriving at the same product infringes the patent (section 48 of the Patents Act).

In earlier times, patents were granted for fourteen years presumable due to the reason that it took about seven years to train the trainees and fourteen years to train two generations of trainees. In England it was increased to sixteen years in the early part of the twentieth century. We followed suit and sixteen years period was provided in the previous Act dealing with Patents. In the Patents Act the period was 14 years except for some categories where the norm, was five or seven years (Section 53 of the Patents Act)TRIPS mandates protection of patents for twenty years. We have also provided the same by the 2002 amendment.

Patents can be inherited by the heirs of a patentee. A Patentee may sell (assign) or mortgage a patent. They have the right to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention and may authorize others to do any of these things by a license and receive royalties or other compensation for the privilege (Chapter xiii of the Patents Act: Register of Patents)

A person making unauthorized use of a patented invention, may be sued by the patentee for damages and can be injuncted (can obtain an order of inunction) to prevent further infringement. However there are no provision for Criminal Prosecution for the infringer.(Chapter XII of the Patents Act: Suits Concerning Infringement of Patents) TRIPS mandates members to provide criminal procedures and penalties in cases of willful trade mark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale, but not for the violation of patents(Article 61 of the TRIPS).