Jiomeet and Zoom copyright controversy

1) INTRODUCTION

The launch of JioMeet was characterised by stir in the legal market and suspicions in the business world due to its uncanny similarity to its existing market dominant rival, Zoom. The issue of similarity in the application design and features of JioMeet to that of Zoom was also found trending on Twitter with users depicting a mixed reaction where some were found praising the newly launched application for it being ‘Indian’ while others labelled it as a sly tactic by Mr.Ambani. The controversy finally became apparent with the Zoom communication head announcing that legal implications against JioMeet are being discussed. However, such acts of non literal copying of the computer software are not new in the competitive world and it is only due to lack of any codified law or any standard guidelines in India that creators are using it to their advantage. This post henceforth analyses the judicial precedents and the intellectual property laws in India in order to understand the possible outcomes of legal dispute of such nature.

2) POSITION OF INDIAN REGULATIONS:

The legal position of GUI’s (Graphical User Interface) under the Indian Designs Act, 2000 was clear until the Amazon Technologies Inc., case however post this it became uncertain due to the adamant stand of Indian Design Office to not accept software registration under the Designs Act, 2000 and henceforth more clarity awaits in regard to the definition of ‘article’ & ‘design’ to register computer software related issues within it. Recently the changes to include graphic symbols, logos and GUI’s have also been proposed under the Design Rules, 2019 and are in the public domain for comments & objections.[1] Further, the registration of computer software under the Patent Law also remains a complex area where even after the removal of the grant of protection to software on its technicality aspect by the Computer Related Guidelines, 2017, the patents office has been known to grant patents to technical software companies.[2] Hence as the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology suggests, the best way to protect GUI is under the Indian Copyright Law, 1957(“ICA”) only.

The Copyright Act, 1957 provides number of regulations to safeguard computer software. It is well known that under The Copyright Act, 1957  the definition of “computer programme”, extends protections to not mere ideas but to the expression of those ideas into phrases, cryptograms, codes, plans or any similar instruction capable of being machine read and its execution to achieve an outcome.[3] Moreover, it is under Sec 2(o) of the same act which entails charge of software as literary works.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) has also thoroughly explained the scope of protection of the graphic user interfaces. The look and feel aspect, the application software, the source and object code are certain categories which are viable to be protected under the ICA.[4] Further it has also been iterated by the courts that in the cases of infringement of computer software, the non-literal elements and the substantial similarity with regards to the designing, content & user interface under the ICA has to be assessed to arrive at a conclusion.[5] This has been done to combat the loopholes within the act since it only protected the literal expression and not the mere ideas related to the structure, content, designing.

Further the applications should succeed in clarifying the ‘test of originality’ under Section 13 of ICA and should also fall under Sec 17 of ICA, i.e. should be the first owner of the application in order to command superiority and shield itself from copyright infringement. These provisions protect the software from copyright infringement. However under the intellectual property rights legal system both the statute and the courts suffer from grave irregularities and the creators use these loopholes to their advantage regardless of their intention being malafide or bonafide. Increasingly it is being observed that instead of going into the merits of the case the courts in a plethora of infringement cases have ruled by just considering that the dominant companies like Adobe or Microsoft etc., hold the original copyright certificate and hence it acts as a sufficient evidence for originality.[6]

In the instant case regardless of the similarity existing in the features of the JioMeet application for example the ‘Join’, ‘New Meeting’, ’Schedule’& ‘Share Screen’, the copyright protection would not entail to these functionality aspect per se as it depicts the mere idea but would rather augment to the similarity quotient in the design and manner of arrangement of these icons since they depict the expression of a certain idea. Furthermore, if according to the viewers & users the subsequent work provides the impression of unmistakable resemblance to the parent work, then this literal imitation would amount to infringement even after minor variations.[7] A bare perusal of the two interfaces of the JioMeet and Zoom resulted in users being in awe of the similar experience in using the two due to identical texting experiences & same arrangement of functions. Hence, the reactions of the end users are form substantial evidence of similarity between the two.

3) THE INTERNATIONAL APPROACH

Different aspects of GUI’s and UI’s are strongly shielded under the copyright, patent, trademark acts in America. The computer software interfaces are protected as ‘compilation of items’ i.e. an intra-modular approach of existing and new ideas arranged in a manner to give birth to an original work. The protection of blockchain for air space management to Bell Helicopter Textron[8] and the registration of click based ladder tool trading to Trading Technologies International Inc., of Chicago[9] under the patent act of USA, are few examples of how interfaces and operating systems are being increasingly granted patent protection.

USA has been able to achieve such successful rates of protecting intellectual property only after many hit and trial approaches in its system. From the ‘iterative approach’ to the ‘Whelan approach’ various mechanisms have been devised to protect the non-literal expressions, since these are the most crucial to any creator. However it was the Altai test which is the most recent and advanced in this field and the International courts have stuck to this approach with continuous variations.[10] This Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison(Altai) test for computer software copyright issues also comes with its own criticism in the foreign courts and India hasn’t also fully accepted it.

As in this Zoom and JioMeet case, the Indian jurisprudence has been resolving the complexities of resemblance by the ‘look and feel’ strategy from quite long, however with the increased integrities this is being proved redundant in the cases of infringement of software technology as this ‘look and feel’ aspect was originally used to solve the issues of similarity in video films. Hence in absence of any other any suitable criteria for differentiating between the non literal elements of computer software, Indian courts should move on the Altai lines to formulate an inclusive legal approach.

4) CONCLUSION:

There are no two opinions in the conclusion that Zoom has a strong case against JioMeet. Even though the JioMeet interface has been updated since the rise in this resemblance controversy, still there are similarities to great extents. This case also surfaces serious questions related to white labelling, issues related to discriminatory use of ‘Make in India’ initiative and the grave loopholes and roadblocks in the intellectual property laws due to which India is not able to increase its domestic potential.