Create courts specially equipped to deal with IPR cases
Broken
No government order has been issued to create separate courts for handling Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Cases. However, the National Intellectual Property Rights Policy 2016 proposes to adjudicate IP disputes through commercial courts under the Commercial Courts Act 2015.
It is not only the text but the spirit and context that matter too and therefore the performance against this promise would have been classified as “Fulfilled” if the promise had been realised in spirit.
However, it must be noted that Commercial Courts are not new Courts that have been created,nor are the judges increased for this purpose. Reproduced below is the text of The Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Act, 2015
This shows that the existing Act provided for the existing Courts/Judges are being posted in Commercial Courts, not the additional Judges recruited for this purpose.
“3(3) The State Government shall, with the concurrence of the Chief Justice of the High Court appoint one or more persons having experience in dealing with commercial disputes to be the Judge or Judges, of a Commercial Court, from amongst the cadre of Higher Judicial Service in the State.”
(Note: For the citizen’s information, it must be mentioned that the BJP government promulgated an Ordinance amending the Commercial Courts Act removing the provision for “concurrence” of Chief Justice compromising the independence of Judiciary.)
It is evident in practice too.
Dated 7th July, 2018, Delhi High Court nominated all District Courts/Judges as Commercial Courts under the Act defeating the spirit of the promise of creating Courts specially equipped to deal with IPR Cases.
Mumbai High Court’s Commercial Courts started functioning in October 2018 and the district Courts have been assigned the responsibility of functioning as Commercial Courts.
Over all, the spirit of the promise has been defeated by not creating special Courts specifically for IPR. Hence, it is classified as “Broken”