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The case (here) in the following post is the first of its kind and an interesting one. It deals with matters related to the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act, 2001.
Preliminary observation
Before going into the facts of the case,
the court pointed to a major lapse on the part of the Government in relation to its inaction in implementing various provisions of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act, 2001 (‘the Act’). The Act under Chapter VIII envisages setting up of an Appellate Tribunal. This chapter also provides for the IPAB to act as a transitional tribunal till a specialized tribunal is established. Though these provisions have been in force for six and a half years, the government has been negligent as it has not yet operationalized them! The consequence is that disputes under this Act are piled on to regular courts which are not only over-loaded and short of judges but also lack technical knowledge required to resolve such disputes. Therefore, the court urges the Government to take immediate steps in implementing these provisions.
Facts
The petitioner filed an application for registration of a novel variety of cotton that it had developed. The said application was published in the Plant Variety Journal. The respondent filed an opposition to the application, however, the opposition over-shot the stipulated period of 3 months. The Registrar accepted the delayed opposition thereby condoning the delay.
Issues
The main question before the court was whether the Registrar had the power to condone a delay in matters regarding filing of opposition. In order to address this question the court primarily relied on Rules 32 and 33 of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Rules, 2003 (‘Rules’) and Section 21(2) of the Act.
Briefly, Rule 32 mandates compliance with time schedules provided for in the Act in relation to advertisements, oppositions, etc. Rule 33(6) allows the Registrar to condone a delay with regard to submission of evidence. And Section 21(2) states that any person may file an opposition within 3 months of date of advertisement.
It was contended that the power under Rule 33(6) to condone delay should be extended to Rule 32. The court highlighted that Rule 33 deals with condonation of delay in relation to submission of evidence. On the other hand, Rule 32 explicitly deals with filing of oppositions and states that the time period provided for in the Act is absolute and therefore cannot be extended. The court, therefore, holds that the power under Rule 33 is with regard to a specific matter and hence cannot be imported into Rule 32 which deals with other matters.
Having established this, the court then assesses whether the time period of three months under Section 21(2) is incapable of extension in view of Rule 32. In this regard, it was held that since the Act does not provide for a sanction in case of non-compliance with the said period, the Registrar can extend the time-limit. This is supported by the fact that time-limitations are procedural matters and given that the statute deals with rights of farmers, procedural irregularities should not hinder realization of rights conferred by the Act. Moreover, since the Act is a beneficial legislation it should be interpreted liberally in order to achieve the objectives for which it was made. Also, the court observed that a rule takes colour from the substantive provisions of the Act and therefore cannot be read to limit the application of the Act.
Parallels were drawn with Section 21 (2) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 which expressly prohibits filing of oppositions after the prescribed time period. Since this negative connotation is missing from the present Act, the court says this furthers the legislative intent of condoning a delay.
It was also accepted that since the applications were published and not personally notified to the opposite party, there could be circumstances where the interested party missed the advertisement and in appropriate cases, the Registrar should be allowed to condone delay.
Therefore, it was held that Rule 32 should be read as directory and not mandatory. In this regard, the court also held that the Central Govt. has the power to make such a rule and this rule is not liable to be struck down.
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