Of Assignments, Licenses and other Demons thereof

Author: Narayanan MH, 3rd Year student of IIT Law School, IIT Kharagpur

The title of this blog post amuses the author as much as it amuses its readers, as the author during his initial year in law school always got confronted by one question,
“What is the difference between an agreement and a contract?”

Being from a non legal family background the author answered:

“Section 2(h) of Indian Contract Act: an agreement enforceable by law is a contract”

But nearing the last few months of his legal studies, after few fruitful classes, discussions, and internships, the author learned that it is not as simple as stating section 2(h).

The author considers the Contract Act, 1872, to be one of the essential guide for a law student to begin his/her/third gender’s (Supreme Court now recognizes them) legal journey and hence would like to share his limited understanding of the answer to the above question before venturing into the title.

In layman’s words section 2 states that a Person A who for the purpose of getting assent of Person B proposes to do an act (includes abstinence) and Person B accepts it, then Person A becomes the promisor and Person B becomes the promisee. The accepted proposal becomes a promise.

For example the owner of this blog offering the author to publish his article and the author accepting the proposal makes it a promise.

Section 2(d) states consideration as an act, abstinence or promise of the promisee—Person B (past, present and future of doing) at the desire of promisor—Person A.

 

If a promise accepted by Person B has a counterpart of consideration to Person A it is an agreement. (Section 2(e)).

Continuing with the example stated above the author agreeing to pay Rs. 200  as publishing charge to the owner of blog makes the promise an agreement and the promise or act of paying Rs. 200 becomes consideration.

Now that agreement is understood the important section for understanding the meaning the section 2(h) (legally enforceable agreements) is section 10 of the Contract Act.

Section 10 seeks compliance of 4 conditions from an agreement to make it a contract:

·           Free consent (Section 14)

·           Competency of Parties (Section 11)

·           Lawful consideration (Section 23)

·           Lawful object. (Section 23)

Both the author and the blog owner are of legal age (competent) and gave free consent for the agreement. Hence, it is now enforceable by law becoming a contract. If the author does not pay Rs. 200 to the blog owner after this article gets published then the blog owner can move the court to enforce the contract.

From the above explanation, the author understood the difficulty in comprehending one of the shortest bare acts in law school and hence restricts himself to the question without going into further legal intricacies like consensus adidum, if the readers are interested they can do research on the following questions:

       Difference between void, voidable and illegal agreements and contracts?

       Difference between a deed and an agreement?

Coming back to the title, hindu mythology being one of the most fascinating mythologies of the world often portrayed demons as powerful as gods. In one such mythology, demons have the power of rising from the blood spilled from another demon and also have the power to deceive the seer. But the seer can find the demons if he knows what to look for amidst their varied appearances, hence the use of demons in the title.

The motive of the author here is to make the reader aware of these demons namely, assignments and license and their ability to deceive the seer.

Now that the author has researched and wrote this article, he cannot just like that give away this article to the blog owner for publication without being aware of his rights. The author by virtue of Copyright Act, section 14 has several rights from now on called “Bundle of Rights” (as used by the author’s Copyright law professor).

The 200 rupees given to the blog owner has 20-10 rupees note, likewise the bundle of rights have many individual rights like right to communication to public, right to translate, right to sell copies etc.

Assignments, licenses are the instruments used to legally transfer/permit the others to use one’s right.

License can be simply termed as permission from the way it is used in daily life like driving license, shop license etc. When a license is granted the main thing to be remembered is the licensee is not the owner, he just has permission to use the right.

If the author permits the blog owner to publish this article in his blog, the blog owner can do so only in this blog, while the author holds the rights to publish this article anywhere else.

Assignment on the other hand is assigning a right, if the author assigns the right to publish to this blog owner, then the author can never publish this article anywhere, but that does not take away the authors other rights in the bundle.

Thus, the essential elements in understanding licenses and assignments are that there are multiple rights, they can be either assigned fully or grant permission to others to use.

The reader must also note that there can be many varieties of this assignments and licenses based on the term of the contract like time, name of right, area, and others.

As an end to this article the author would term contract law as ‘Nothing’ with two quotes.

Quote 1: “You ain't seen nothin' yet.”  -AL JOLSON

Quote 2: “Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of an existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with anxiety, nausea, or panic.” - P. L. HEATH- 

Disclaimer: This blog or any post thereof is not to be considered to be in any way associated with the official stand of IIT kharagpur or RGSOIPL on the issues being discussed in the said post. The opinions on the blog are the authors own and should not be considered as legal advice.