The Scheme of the Indian Act, and When It Came Into Force

In one line

Act 37 of 2000, assented on 4 September 2000 and brought into force in stages, the working Act only from 1 May 2011, ten chapters and ninety-six sections, drafted on the same template as the Geographical Indications Act of the year before.

Section 1

Section 1(1). The Act may be called the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Design Act, 2000. It is Act 37 of 2000 and it was enacted on 4 September 2000.

Section 1(2). It extends to the whole of India.

Section 1(3). It comes into force on such date as the Central Government may appoint by notification, and different dates may be appointed for different provisions.

The commencement came in three stages. India Code gives the Act's enforcement date as 1 May 2004, but its own footnote to section 1 confines that date to two sections, and it leaves out the notification that brought in almost everything else.

• 1 May 2004 for sections 3 and 5, the Registrar and the Registry, by notification S.O. 278(E) dated 12 February 2004;
• 1 May 2011 for sections 1(1) and (2), 2, 3(2), 4, 6 to 31, 54, 56 to 92, 95 and 96, by notification S.O. 746(E) dated 11 April 2011, published in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary, on 13 April 2011; and
• 15 January 2014 for sections 93 and 94, by notification S.O. 84(E) dated 10 January 2014.

Read the three together and the picture is this. The Registrar and the Registry were provided for in 2004. Registration, rights, infringement, dealings, rectification, offences and the Miscellaneous chapter began on 1 May 2011. The convention-country and reciprocity provisions followed in January 2014. Sections 32 to 53 and section 55, the Appellate Board and its stand-in, appear in none of the three, and the Registry's own list of notifications shows no other.

The Rules came earlier than the Act. The Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Design Rules, 2001 were published by notification G.S.R. 892(E) dated 10 December 2001, made under section 96, and their rule 1(3) says they "shall come into force on the date of the commencement of the Act". So they were made in 2001, and they had no work to do before 1 May 2011, when the registration provisions and the rule-making power in section 96 came into force.

One point about dates that catches students out. A widely repeated claim is that the Act came into force on 4 September 2000. That is the date of enactment, not of commencement. The Registrar and Registry provisions came nearly four years later, and the working Act more than ten years later.

The ten chapters

Read from the arrangement of sections in the official print.