JUDGMENT SUMMARY: Eastern Book Co. v. D.B. Modak
DATE OF JUDGMENT: 12 December 2007
BENCH: B.N. Agrawal, P.P. Naolekar
CITATION: (2008) 1 SCC 1.
PARTIES:
Appellants:
- (1) Eastern Book Co.
- (2) EBC Publishing Pvt. Ltd.
- (3) Surendra Malik
Respondents:
- (1) Spectrum Business Support Ltd.
- (2) Regent Data Tech Pvt. Ltd.
SUBJECT: Scope of Copyright in copy-edited judgments.
Facts: The Appellant(1), Eastern Book Co. is a publishing house involved in printing and publishing of books related to law. The Appellant issues a law report containing Supreme Court Cases by the name of Supreme Court Cases(SCC) which are procured from the office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court. The judgments are copy-edited, and several inputs such as formatting the text, paraphrasing, adding headnotes etc. are made to make them user friendly. The headnotes and footnotes are prepared by Appellant(3), Surendra Malik. The respondents created a software, published on a CD Rom by the name of ‘Grand Pix’ and ‘The Laws’. As per the Appellants, they copied all the modules from the Appellant’s law report SCC including the sequencing, selection and arrangement of cases along with style and formatting, footnote numbers, cross-references, etc.
The appellants moved to the HC of Delhi for temporary injunctions against the respondents. However, before the HC, the respondents accepted 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 refusing to grant an interim injunction, the appellants moved to the Division Bench of the High Court. The court refused them the interim relief and allowed respondents to sell their CD ROMS during the pendency of the appeals. The court held that the appellants are not the author of the SC judgments and by making certain corrections, does not change the character of the judgment and it does not become materially different from the original judgment. Aggrieved by the decisions of the Division Bench of HC, the appellants filed the appeals to the Supreme Court.
IMPORTANT PROVISIONS:
Section 13, Section 14 and Section 52(1)(iv)(q), Copyright Act 1957.
ISSUES:
The main issues that arose before the Supreme Court are-
(1) 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 the requirements for the same?
(2) Whether the appellants would be entitled to the copyright in the full version of the copy-edited text of the judgments published in the appellants' law report or only in some of the inputs which have been placed in the raw text?
ANALYSIS OF THE JUDGMENT:
Appellant’s Contentions: The appellants contended that their copyright exists in the copy-edited version of judgments as a whole as published in their law report ‘SCC’ which is a result of the skill, labour and capital. They did not claim a monopoly in publishing judgments of the SC as they’re being published by other publishers without copying from each other’s publication.
Respondent’s Contentions: Judgments published in the SCC 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. The inputs put by the Appellants are nothing but expressing an idea which can be expressed in a limited way, and as such, there cannot be copyright.
Court’s Observations:
The Supreme Court admitted that the position of the law reports in SCC of the judgments of the Supreme Court is a derivative work in the public domain and do not amount to infringement of copyright as per Section 52(1)(q)(iv).
The court stated that “the copy-edited judgments would not satisfy the copyright merely by establishing the amount of skill, labour and capital put in the inputs of the copy-edited judgments and the original or innovative thoughts for the creativity are completely excluded. Accordingly, original or innovative thoughts are necessary to establish copyright in the author’s work. To secure a copyright for the judgments delivered by the court, it is necessary that the labour, skill and capital invested should be sufficient to communicate or impart to the judgment printed in SCC some quality or character which the original judgment does not possess and which differentiates the original judgment from the printed one. The Copyright Act is not concerned with the original idea but with the expression of thought. Copyright has nothing to do with originality or literary merit.”
The court further added, “To claim copyright in a compilation, the author must produce the material with the exercise of his skill and judgment which may not be created in the sense that it is novel or non- obvious, but at the same time it is not a product of merely labour and capital. The derivative work produced by the author must have some distinguishable features and flavour to the raw text of the judgments delivered by the court. The trivial variation or inputs put in the judgment would not satisfy the test of the copyright of an author.”
The Supreme Court held that “although for establishing copyright, the creativity standard applies was not that something must be novel or non-obvious, but some amount of creativity in work to claim copyright was required. It did not require a minimal degree of creativity. Arrangement of the facts or data or the case law is already included in the judgment of the court. Therefore, the creativity of SCC would only be an addition of certain facts or material already published, case law published in another law report and its own arrangement and presentation of the judgment of the court in its own style to make it more user- friendly. The selection and arrangement can be viewed as typical and at the best result of the labour, skill and investment of capital lacking even minimal creativity. It does not as a whole display sufficient originality so as to amount to an original work of the author. To support copyright, there must be some substantive variation and not merely a trivial variation, not the variation of the type where limited ways/unique of expression available and an author selects one of them which can be said to be a garden variety. Novelty or invention or innovative idea is not the requirement for protection of copyright, but it does require a minimal degree of creativity. In our view, the aforesaid inputs put by the appellants in the copy-edited judgments do not touch the standard of creativity required for the copyright.”
The court added, “However, the inputs put in the original text by the appellants in (i) segregating the existing paragraphs in the original text by breaking them into separate paragraphs; (ii) adding internal paragraph numbering within a judgment after providing uniform paragraph numbering to the multiple judgments; and (iii) indicating in the judgment the Judges who have dissented or concurred by introducing the phrases like ‘concurring’, `partly concurring’, `partly dissenting’, `dissenting’, `supplementing’, `majority expressing no opinion’, etc., have to be viewed in a different light……… In these inputs put in by the appellants in the judgments reported in 'SCC’, the appellants have a copyright, and nobody is permitted to utilize the same.”
The court partly allowed the appeal by directing that though the respondent shall be allowed to sell the CD ROMS wit the text of Supreme Court judgments with their own headnotes, editorial notes, etc. , he will not use the paragraphs, headnotes, footnotes, etc.prepared by the appellants in their copy-edited versions.
CONCLUSION:
The Supreme Court held that only the compiler’s selection and arrangement might be protected. The raw facts may be copied by others at will. The court also rejected the doctrine of “sweat and brow” as it had numerous defects, the most evident one that it extended copyright protection in a compilation beyond selection and arrangement.
