EASTERN BOOK COMPANY Vs. D B MODAK

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE appeals by special leave have been preferred against the common judgment of a Division Bench of the High Court of Delhi involving the analogous question and are, therefore, decided together by this judgment.

(2.) APPELLANT No. 1 " Eastern Book Company is a registered partnership firm carrying on the business of publishing law books. Appellant No. 2 " EBC Publishing pvt. Ltd. is a company incorporated and existing under the companies Act, 1956. The said appellants are involved in the printing and publishing of various books relating to the field of law. One of the well-known publications of appellant No. 1 " Eastern Book Company is the law report "supreme Court Cases" (hereinafter called "scc" ). The appellant publishes all reportable judgments along with non-reportable judgments of the Supreme Court of India. Yet another category included in SCC is short judgments, orders, practice directions and record of proceedings. The law report SCC was commenced in the year 1969 and has been in continuous publication ever since. The name "supreme court Cases" has been coined by the appellants and they have been using the same continuously, exclusively and extensively in relation to the law reports published by them. For the purpose of publishing the judgments, orders and proceedings of the Supreme Court, the copies of judgments, orders and proceedings are procured from the office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of India. After the initial procurement of the judgments, orders and proceedings for publication, the appellants make copy-editing wherein the judgments, orders and record of proceedings procured, which is the raw source, are copy-edited by a team of assistant staff and various inputs are put in the judgments and orders to make them user friendly by making an addition of cross-references, standardization or formatting of the text, paragraph numbering, verification and by putting other inputs. The appellants also prepare the headnotes comprising of two portions, the short note consisting of catch/lead words written in bold; and the long note, which is comprised of a brief discussion of the facts and the relevant extracts from the judgments and orders of the Court. Headnotes are prepared by appellant No. 3-Surendra Malik. As per the said appellant (plaintiff No. 3 in the suits filed in the Delhi High court), the preparation of the headnotes and putting the various inputs in the raw text of the judgments and orders received from the Supreme Court Registry require considerable amount of skill, labour and expertise and for the said work a substantial amount of capital expenditure on the infrastructure, such as office, equipment, computers and for maintaining extensive library, besides recurring expenditure on both the management of human resources and infrastructural maintenance, is made by the plaintiff-appellants. As per the appellants, SCC is a law report which carries case reports comprising of the appellants' version or presentation of those judgments and orders of the Supreme Court after putting various inputs in the raw text and it constitutes an 'original literary work' of the appellants in which copyright subsists under Section 13 of the Copyright Act, 1957 (hereinafter referred to as "the act") 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 SCC by any other person, is an infringement of the copyright in SCC within the meaning of Section 51 of the Act.

(3.) AGGRIEVED by the said order dated 17. 1. 2001 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 on 9. 3. 2001 directing that during the pendency of the appeals the respondents will 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.