Fisheries Administration and Lagislation

Unit 4 - General background on law

4.2. M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath- ‘Span Motel Case’
The Supreme Court of India, in the landmark case of M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath, also known as the ‘Span Motel case’ laid down this doctrine for the first time. In this case, the state government granted lease of riparian forestland to a private company for commercial purposes. The purpose of the lease was to build a motel at the bank of the River Beas. A report published in a national newspaper alleged that the motel management interfered with the natural flow of the river in order to divert its course and to save the motel from future floods. The Supreme Court initiated suo motu action based on the newspaper item as the facts disclosed serious acts of environmental degradation.
The doctrine of public trust has now come to be an integral part of the environmental jurisprudence of the country. The doctrine has helped the alienation of valuable community resources to private persons, recognizing the inherent worth and value of these resources to the community. The development of this doctrine in our country will go a long way in establishing a strong framework for the protection of nature’s timeless gifts to man.

• A patent is not a monopoly, but just prevents other people from using it for a certain period of time. Or they have to pay you if they want to use it.
• Originally, patents were issued by royalty. You would bid for a patent, and then you had a business monopoly. You bid for the right to collect tariffs, and so the king got the money up front, and then the winner of the bid could keep the tariffs he collected.
• Patents are usually ok for 20 years after issuing +/- delays; for drugs it’s about 22 years. Drugs have longer patent period because it takes so long to get it.
• Copyrights- It is an enabling legislation
• Copyrights last for 70-80 years after the author dies.
• Why they are so much longer then patents?
• The question is to balance objectives: you want people to have the incentive to engage in the creative work to get a copyright/patent. You wouldn’t be giving a reward if everyone could just copy it.
• So we need to figure out how much protection would encourage how much innovation. You could make a calculation of the economically efficient number of years for a copyright.
• Another problem: the design of something is a public good.
• Public good – it would be beneficial to society if everyone had the good, but not for one individual to make it. The good is non-rivalrous and non-excludable.
• Non-rival – one person’s consumption of the good doesn’t decrease someone else’s ability to consume the good. E.g. National defense.
• For ordinary goods, e.g. a car tyre, for one person to get a car tyre, you have to buy one for yourself, and you are the only person who can benefit from it. Once the design is created, there is a zero marginal cost per user.
• So public good usually has a huge fixed cost, and zero or tiny marginal costs for each additional unit.
• Trademarks
• To protect the brand/unique label of the product from being used by somebody else, we could get a trade mark and then we could go to court and if it is used by unauthorized persons. If consumers wouldn’t be confused because your products are so different, then you need not challenge.
• Designs Act 1911 and New Designs Act 2000 was enacted which superseded the earlier act. The design means only the features of shape, configuration pattern, ornamental or composition of lines or colors applied to any article by any industrial process.