[Reader-list] 'The Laws' vs 'Grand Jurix'

[zamrooda]

Reason to be proud of the Delhi HIgh Court:


Delhi High Court finds judgments published in law reports not protectable by 
copyright in India.

Judgments are borrowed from the public domain and cannot be monopolised 

The Delhi High Court has found Eastern Book Company's claim of infringement of 
copyright in the CD-ROMs of its compilation of Supreme Court Cases untenable 
as copyright did not subsist in court judgments on the ground that they had 
been borrowed from the public domain and could not be monopolised. 


The case:

Plaintiffs, Eastern Book Company print and publish books on law and have been 
publishing law reports under the name of Supreme Court Cases since 1969. The 
company has published a software package on CD-ROM including a database of 
the law reports and a search facility under the name "SCC Online Supreme 
Court Cases Finder". As a complementary product to the case finder, the 
company has also developed the full text of the Supreme Court Cases on 
CD-ROM. Eastern Book Company claims copyright in the headnotes, selection, 
manner of arrangement and presentation of the judgments both in print and in 
electronic forms. 

Defendant Navin J Desai has developed a software package named 'The Laws' 
published in two CD-ROMs and defendant DB Modak has developed a software 
package called 'Grand Jurix' in three CD-ROMs. 

Eastern Book Company filed suits against the defendants alleging that - 


The software packages Grand Jurix and The Laws had infringed its copyright in 
the CD-ROMs by copying the headnotes, short notes and the entire text of the 
copy-edited judgments verbatim, including certain mistakes made inadvertently 
in its journals.

Desai and Modak were selling their software packages for US$ 213 (Rs.10,000) 
while Eastern Book Company's package was priced at US$ 1532 (Rs.72,000), 
thereby causing incalculable loss to the plaintiffs.

The defendants argued that - 
Their work was much wider in scope than that of the plaintiff;


The plaintiffs had filed the suits with the intent to stunt healthy 
competition by retaining monopoly over publication of Supreme Court judgments 
in CD-ROM form;


Copyright was granted in relation to an original literary work. Judgments of 
courts were in the public domain and could not be appropriated by one party. 
Also copyright could not subsist in mere typographical arrangement and 
standard formats.

The Court found that the plaintiffs had no copyright in the judgments 
published in their law reports on the ground that -
 "[A] copyright is a limited monopoly having its origin in protection. But 
there cannot be any monopoly in the subject matter which the author has 
borrowed from public domain. Others are at liberty to use the same material 
... ."
 Eastern Book Company has reportedly appealed against the court's above order.
 002.140201.05/20/35