Industrial Designs Act, 2001

Chapter 15

Assignment and Licensing

Assignment.

76.—(1) The design right is transmissible by assignment, testamentary disposition or operation of law, as personal or moveable property.

(2) Any equities in respect of the design right may be enforced in like manner as in respect of any other personal property.

(3) An assignment or mortgage of a design right, or a vesting assent relating to it, shall not be effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor, mortgagor or party granting such assent or, as the case may be, a personal representative and this requirement may be satisfied in a case where the assignor, mortgagor or party granting the assent or personal representative is a body corporate by the affixing of its seal.

(4) Until an application has been made for registration of a transaction referred to in the section under section 41

(a) the transaction shall be ineffective as against a person acquiring a conflicting interest in or under the design right in ignorance of it; and

(b) a person claiming to be a licensee by virtue of the transaction shall not be entitled to the rights and remedies conferred by sections 63 and 65.

(5) Where there is more than one registered proprietor of a design, no registered proprietor shall, without the consent of each of the others, grant a licence under the design right or assign or mortgage a share in it.

(6) An assignment may be partial so as to apply to—

(a) one or more but not all of the acts the registered proprietor has the exclusive right to undertake or authorise, or

(b) part but not the whole of the period for which the design right is to subsist.