Right to continue use begun before date of filing or priority

(1) Where a patent is granted for an invention, a person who before the date of filing of the patent application, or if priority was claimed, before the date of priority, does in good faith in Belize, an act which would constitute an infringement of the patent if it were then in force, or makes effective and serious 31 preparations in good faith to do such an act, shall have the rights specified in sub-section (2). (2) The rights referred to in sub-section (1) shall be the following, namely– (a) to continue to do or, as the case may be, to do that act himself; and (b) if the act was done or preparations had been made to do it in the course of a business– (i) to assign the right under paragraph (a); (ii) to transmit the right under paragraph (a) to his heirs on his death or, in the case of a body corporate, on its dissolution, to any person who acquires that part of the business in the course of which the act was done or preparations had been made to do it; or (iii) to authorize the act to be done by any partners of his for the time being in that business, and the doing of that act by virtue of this sub-section shall not amount to an infringement of the patent concerned. (3) The rights specified in sub-section (2) shall not include the right to grant a licence to any person to do an act referred to in sub-section (1). (4) Where a product which is the subject of a patent is disposed of by any person to another in exercise of a right conferred by sub-section (2), that other and any person claiming through him shall be entitled to deal with the product in the same way as if it had been disposed of by a sole owner of the patent. 32