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Indian Copyright Act, 1957; Ss.2 (k), 13, 17 and 52:Copyright in Law Report - Publishing of copy edited version of judgments, order and proceedings of Supreme Court by appellant - Copying by respondents - Claim of copyright in the publication/ published work - Held: Originality in work is a requirement of copyright - It is a right to stop others from exploiting the work of owner without his consent - There is no copyright in the facts per se - All literary works have to be original/primary work for claiming such protection - However, derivative/secondary work would qualify for claiming such protection provided skill, labour and capital involved in its creation and creativity in the end product is such as to create a new work so as to make the creator of derivative work author of it - The Courts have only to evaluate as to whether the derivative work involved substantial amount of skill labour and capital and need not to evaluate the creative aspect of the same - Law Report of Supreme Court Judgments is derivative work - Reproduction of judgments in public domain do not infringe the copyright - Innovative thoughts are necessary to establish copyright in the judgments - Copy-edited judgments would not satisfy the claim of copyright merely by establishing the amount of skill, labour and capital put in the inputs of the copy edited judgments excluding innovative thoughts for creativity - But it should be such and sufficient to import to the judgments printed, some quality which original judgment does not possess and which differentiate the original judgment from the one printed in the Report - Though appellants improved the readability of judgment of the copy-edited iudgment by doing considerable labour etc. but that does not meet the minimum requirement of creativity required for claiming copyright in it - However, creation of paragraph and classification of opinion of judges would require extensive reading and careful study of the subject - It also requires considerable knowledge, sound iudgment and legal skill - Hence, appellants have copyright in it - Respondents are directed not to use the paragraphs and classification of Judges' opinion as in the Report.Copyright Act - Object and scope of - Discussed. Principles:Principle of copyright - Applicability of.Supreme Court Judgments - Owner of for the purpose of copyright - Held: Government is the first owner of the copyright in the judgment. Words and Phrases: 'Copyright Protection' - Meaning of in the context of Copyright Protection Act, 1957.Literary works - Classification of.'Original work' and 'derivative work' - Meaning of.Appellant is the publisher of a law report publishing therein orders, practice directions, record of proceedings, short judgments and Judgments of the Supreme Court of India. After the initial procurement of the judgments, orders and proceedings for publication from the Registrar, Supreme Court of India, the appellants make copy-editing of the judgments, orders and record of proceedings procured and various inputs are put in the judgments and orders by making an addition of cross-references, formatting of the text, paragraph numbering, verification etc. to make them user friendly. The appellants also prepare the headnotes, which require considerable amount of skill, labour and expertise. And for the said work a substantial amount of capital expenditure on infrastructure, such as office equipments, computers and for maintaining extensive library, besides recurring expenditure on both the management of human resources and infrastructural maintenance has been made by the appellants. Appellants alleged that the Law Report, so prepared, constitutes an 'original literary work' in which copyright subsists in terms of Section 13 of the Copyright Act, 1957 and thus the appellants alone have the exclusive right to make printed as well as electronic copies of the same under Section 14 of the Act. Any scanning or copying or reproduction done of or from the Reports or pages or paragraphs or portions of any volume of the Report by any other person, is an infringement of the copyright in the Report within the meaning of Section 51 of the Act. Appellants further alleged that respondent No. 2, another publisher, has brought out a software called "Grand Jurix" published on CD-ROMs and the other respondent, also a publisher, has brought out software package called "The Laws" published on CD-ROMs; and that all the modules in the respondents' software packages have already been lifted verbatim from their work; copied the sequencing, selection and arrangement of the cases coupled with the entire text of copy-edited judgments as published in the Law Report, along with and including the style and formatting, the copy-editing paragraph numbers, footnote numbers, cross-references, etc.; and such acts of the defendant-respondents constitute infringement of the appellants' exclusive right to the same. The appellants moved the High Court for issuance of temporary injunction by filing applications in the Suit against the respondents. Single Judge of the High Court dismissed the applications for interim injunction. However, before the Single Judge, the respondents conceded that the appellants have copyright in the headnotes and as such they undertook not to copy these headnotes in their CD-ROMs. Aggrieved by the order of the Single Judge of the High Court refusing to grant interim injunction, the appellants preferred appeals before a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court and the applications praying for interim relief were also filed in both the appeals. The applications praying for the interim relief were disposed of by the Division Bench of the High Court directing that during pend ency of the appeals the respondents would be entitled to sell their CD-ROMs with the text of the judgment of the Supreme Court along with their own headnotes which should not in any way be a copy of the headnotes and the text of the plaintiff-appellants. Disposing of the matter, the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court held that the appellants were not the author of the Supreme Court judgments and by merely making certain corrections therein or giving paragraph numbers, the character of a judgment does not change and it does not become C materially different from the original judgment; that once a person has a right to obtain certified copy of the judgment from the Registry of the Court and to publish it, it cannot be said that others have no right to take text of the judgment from the journal where it is already reported; that the act of reproduction of any judgment or order of the Court, Tribunal or any other judicial authority under Section 52(1)(q) of the Copy Right Act, is not an infringement of the copyright. Any person can, therefore, publish judgments of the Courts, however, there would be copyright in the headnotes to the judgments prepared by the appellants. So far as footnotes and editorial notes are concerned, it cannot be denied that these are the publisher's own creations and based on publisher's own research and, thus, will have a copyright of the appellants. Hence, the Division Bench modified the judgment of F the Single Judge by allowing the respondents to sell their CD-ROMs with the text of the judgments of the Supreme Court along with their own headnotes, editorial notes, if any, which should not in any way be copy of the headnotes of the appellants. Thus, the High Court has not accepted the case of the appellants that they have a copyright in the copy-edited judgments of the Supreme Court. Hence the present appeals and the Contempt Petition.In the present case, the questions which require determination by the Court were as to what shall be the standard of originality in the copy-edited judgments of the Supreme Court which is a derivative work and what would be required in a derivative work to treat it the original work of an author and thereby giving a protected right under the Copyright Act, 1957 to the author of the derivative work and as to whether the appellants would be entitled for a copyright as an original literary work in the entire version of the copy-edited text of the judgments published in the appellants' law report or as to whether the appellants would be entitled to the copyright in some of the inputs which have been put in the raw text. Appellants contended that the copyright subsists as a law report in their publication 'SCC' as a whole based cumulatively and compendiously on all the substantial contributions of skill, labour and capital in the creation of various parts of the Report; that the copyright subsists in the copy-edited version; that they do not claim copyright in the raw text of the judgments, certified copies of which are being obtained from the Registry; that they do not claim a monopoly in publishing judgments of the Supreme Court as they are being published by other publishers also without copying from each other publication; that their copyright is in the copy-edited version of the text of judgments as published in sec which is a creation of their skill, labour and capital and there are contributions/inputs/ additions in creating the version of the text of judgments as published in the report; that Section 52(1)(q)(iv) of the Act does not bar the recognization of copyright in the copy-edited version of the text of judgments of the courts as published in law reports; that the Government is the first owner of copyright in the judgments of the courts as per Section 2(k) read with Section 17 and Section 52(1)(q)(iv) of the Act provides that any person wanting to reproduce or publish judgments would not infringe the copyright of the Government, but Section 52(1)(q)(iv) does not imply that in case a person has expended independent skill, labour and capital on the judgments of the courts to create and publish his version of the judgments, any other person is free to copy that person's version of the judgments, substantially or in its entirely; that Copyright subsists in the copy-edited version of the text of judgments of the courts as published in law reports, which have been created by the application of skill, labour and capital which is not trivial or negligible; that the inputs put in the copy-edited judgments in SCC, is a derivative literary work created from pre-existing material of the judgments of the court which is in public domain; that the exercise of independent skill, labour and capital in its creation by the author of such work, and the derivative literary work so created is by their independent skill, labour and capital, which gives them copyright in such creations; that it is not necessary that work created should have a literary merit; that the courts can only evaluate whether the skill, labour and capital actually employed, required in creating the work, is not trivial or negligible; that in deciding whether a derivative work qualifies for copyright protection, it must be considered as a whole, and it is not correct to dissect the work into fragments and consider the copyrightability of each such fragment piecemeal and individually apart from the whole; and that the respondents if wish to reproduce or publish a work already in public domain was obliged to go to the public domain/common source of such work rather than misappropriating the effort and investment of the appellants by copying the version of such work which was created by them by their independent expenditure of skill, labour and capital.Respondent submitted that the judgment of the court is a Government work as defined under Section 2(k)(iii) of the Act; that on account of Section 17 (d) of the Act, the Government in the absence of any agreement to the contrary be the first owner of the copyright therein; that in terms of Section 52(1)(q)(iv) of the Act, publication of the judgments of the apex court by the respondents would not tantamount to infringement of the copyright of the appellants; that the judgments published in the Supreme Court Cases is nothing but merely a derivative work based upon the judgments of the court, which lacks originality as it does not depict independent creation even a modicum of creativity; that the inputs put by the appellants is nothing but expressing an idea which can be expressed in a limited way and as such there cannot be a copyright in it; that filling the blanks or gaps by providing names of the parties or citations of the judgments, both of which are well known and unchangeable parts of that idea, are not original work to warrant copyright protection, either singly or in combination; and that the additions made in the reported judgment by the editors of the Report are only the well known extensions of the reported decision. These extensions lack even the minimal degree of author's creativity or originality or intellectual labour nor does it create additional knowledge, the protection of which is the very basis of the copyright protection.Respondents in the connected Civil Appeal submitted that there is a distinction between a 'law report' as understood in England and a 'law journal' as printed in India; that the appellants' journal 'SCC' is not a law report in the strict sense, inasmuch as it reproduces the judgments of the court verbatim along with inputs. However, a law report known in the traditional English sense is when a law reporter present in the court would record in his own words and language the arguments of the counsel on both sides, give a summary of the facts and incorporate into the said report his transcript of the speech of the Judge. Thus, the appellants' work could only be a law journal and not a law report; that the judgments were specifically made a part of the exception to copyright infringement and thus find place in Section 52(1)(q) of the Act; that for claiming protection of copyright in a derivative work, under the Indian law originality is a pre-condition and originality means only that the work was independently created by the author as opposed to copied from other works, and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity; that reporting of the judgments of the Supreme Court with certain inputs could only be said to be a discovery of facts already in existence; that to create a copyright by alterations of the text, these must be extensive and substantial practically making a new version; that the copy-editing inputs of the appellants are only discoveries/facts and there are limited ways/unique of expressing the various copy-editing inputs and thus no copyright can subsist in such limited/unique expressions; that the facts which are discovered could be expressed in limited ways and as such ways adopted cannot give copyright protection to the inputs or the judgments as a whole; that recognizing the copyright in the copy-edited version of the law reports would amount to giving the appellants a monopoly in the judgments of the courts which is against the intendment of Section 52(1)(q)(iv) and would defeat the purpose of putting judgments in the public domain; that for a derivative work, the originality test as applied in United States Supreme Court should be made applicable whereby the author of a derivative work would satisfy that the work has been produced from his exercise of skill and judgment; and that the exercise of skill and judgment required to produce the work must not be so trivial that it could be characterized a purely mechanical exercise. The work should be independently created by the author as opposed to copied from the other works and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity.Partly allowing the appeals, and disposing of the Contempt Petition, the Court |
