Defences, Forfeiture, Companies and Criminal Procedure

In one line

Goods may be forfeited on conviction, an employee acting to order may be acquitted, a plea of invalidity stops the prosecution, a company and its officers are both liable, and every prosecution needs a written complaint.

Section 60: forfeiture

Section 60(1). "Where a person is convicted of an offence under section 56, the court convicting him may direct the forfeiture to Government of all goods and things by means of, or in relation to, which the offence has been committed."

Section 60(2). Where forfeiture is directed on a conviction and an appeal lies against the conviction, an appeal lies against the forfeiture also.

Section 60(3). On a conviction the court may order any forfeited articles to be destroyed or otherwise disposed of as it thinks fit.

Two differences from the Geographical Indications Act.

First, forfeiture here follows only a conviction. Section 46(1) of that Act permits forfeiture on certain acquittals as well, where the accused escaped by proving he acted without intent to defraud or by naming his supplier. Here an acquitted defendant keeps the goods.

Second, forfeiture here attaches only to section 56. Sections 57, 58 and 59 carry no forfeiture.

Section 61: the employee's exemption

Read chapter 560 first. Sections 61, 62 and 63 of this Act are Chapter IX of the Geographical Indications Act transplanted, and this chapter states only what differs. Repeating the sibling's wording here would teach nothing twice.

What is the same. An accused charged under section 56 is acquitted if he proves three things cumulatively: that the act fell within the duty of his employment and he had no interest in the profit; that he took all reasonable precautions and had no reason to suspect the genuineness of what he was working on; and that on demand by the prosecutor he gave all the information in his power.

What differs from section 47 of the sibling.

The class of accused. The sibling provision is drawn for a person in the business of applying indications or making dies, blocks or instruments, and sets out its conditions in four lettered clauses. This one is drawn for any employee of a chip maker, and its three limbs are the ones set out above.

What he must not have suspected. There it is the genuineness of the geographical indication. Here it is the genuineness of the registered layout-design or of a semiconductor integrated circuit in which it is incorporated, which pushes the enquiry down to the physical article he handled.

The informer's condition survives unchanged, and it does the same work in both: it buys an acquittal for the person at the bench in exchange for the person who gave the order.