Anton Piller Order

To promote arts and sciences, to safeguard consumers, to protect investments, goodwill and trade-secret and last but not the least, for dissemination of knowledge, protection of IPR is a sine-qua-non. Intellectual property law protects use of ideas and information that are of commercial value and prevents others, to the exclusion of the owner of the property, to commercially exploit the material without the owner’s consent.

With the rapid growth of industrialization and international trade, protection of this intellectual property and vis-à-vis to have sufficient safeguards, in the form of Rules or Statutes, has gained immense importance. India can boast of a sound legal regime to deal with the intellectual property protection. The considerable number of statutes that India has, to deal with intellectual property issues, is itself an indication of her concerned attitude towards protection of intellectual property issues.

The various Indian Acts are:

1. Copyright Act, 1957,

2. Trade Marks Act, 1999;

3. Patents Act, 1970 (as amended by Patents [Amendment] Act, 2005),

4. Designs Act, 2000; The Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999;

5. The Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Design Act, 2000 and

6. Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001.

Apart from laying down what are the rights available to the intellectual property owner, these Acts also contain a sound mechanism to prevent infringement of IPR.

The remedies available for protection of IPR are broadly classified into civil and criminal remedies. The orders in line of Anton Piller order are made under the head of civil remedies. It is a court order which requires the defendant in proceedings to permit the plaintiff or his or her legal representatives to enter the defendant's premises in order to obtain evidence essential to the plaintiff's case. It provides the right to search premises and seize evidence without prior warning. This is intended to prevent the destruction of relevant evidence, particularly in cases of alleged trademark, copyright or patent infringements.

The order is named after the 1975 English case of Anton Piller KG v. Manufacturing Processes Limited, dealing with the theft of trade secrets. Anton Piller orders are only issued according to the three-step test set out by Ormrod LJ in Anton Piller:

• There is an extremely strong prima facie case against the respondent,

• The damage, potential or actual, must be profoundly serious for the applicant, and

• There must be clear evidence that the respondents have in their possession relevant documents or things and that there is a real possibility that they may destroy such material before an inter partes application can be made.

One of the ways of ensuring, and undoubtedly the most effective one, is by issuing an Anton Piller order- an extra ordinary relief in the form of an ex parte interim order, which allows the plaintiff to enter and search the defendant’s premises, with his consent. Anton Piller order is an important and a very potent weapon in the plaintiff’s arsenal. Due to its enormous power, if not used sparingly, it can be abused to a large extent.

Anton Piller Order in India

The application of Anton Piller order in India is still in the primary stage. But with awareness of the possible misuse of this order and also the safeguards, the similar sort of abuses that took place in UK, can be prevented by following safeguards and using it sparingly. For that, there is a need for substantive guidelines, which would deal with all the relevant considerations like issue of self-incrimination, relief to be given to the defendant, plaintiff’s rights and obligations, defendants’ rights and obligations etc. Moreover, for its proper application, there is need to educate people about the pros and cons of this order, thereby ensuring proper functioning of Anton Piller order.

In India, Ordinance 39 of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908, authorizes court to issue orders in the line of Anton Piller order. Not only CPC, even the statutes like Trade Marks Act, 1999, The Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999 specifically provide for such an order. However, there have not been much case-laws debating over the aspects of Anton Piller order.

One of the earliest cases that dealt with the concept of Anton Piller order, though cursorily, was National Garments v. National Apparels. Though, it was not a case under Anton Piller but under interlocutory injunction, for restraining the defendant from doing business under the trade name which is in dispute, the court cited with approval from Kerly’s treatise that in extremely urgent cases an ex parte injunction may be obtained before full hearing of the motion or an Anton Piller order, for inspection of the defendant’s premises without prior warning and discovery of his records, may be obtained. The Court also observed that Anton Piller order is similar to the ex parte interlocutory order to take an inventory of the articles etc. passed in an ordinary suit.