Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

RESTRICTIONS ON THE APPLICABILITY OF THE ACT

The sweep of the Competition Act is not such as to include all agreements within its ambit. Thus, agreements which are entered into in respect of various species of intellectual property rights and which recognize the proprietary rights of one party over the other in respect of trade marks, patents, copyrights, geographical indications, industrial designs and semi-conductors are not within the purview of ‘anti-competitive agreements’. The inherently monopolistic rights, which are created in favour of bona fide holders of various forms of intellectual property, have been treated as sacrosanct.