DHARAM DUTT DHAWAN Vs. RAM LAL SURI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS judgment will deal with three appeals filed by Dharam Datt Dhawan, the respondent in each case being firm Ram Lal Suri and Sons, the appeals having arisen out of three suits which were consolidated and decided against the appellant by the learned District Judge at Delhi in which the appellant was the plaintiff in two of the suits and the defendant in the third.

(2.) UP to a point the facts are not in dispute. The appellant Dharam Dalt Dhawan and another man named Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah were the joint authors of a text book called the New Method Matriculation Geometry, and as long ago as 21 -12 -1937, the joint authors entered into an agreement at Lahore with Ram Lal Suri, proprietor of the respondent firm, for the publication of the said text book. This agreement apparently continued to work quite happily until the upheaval of 1947. Under the terms of the agreement the publishers went on publishing the book, of which nine editions had been issued up to the beginning of 1947, the book selling at Rs. 2/ - per copy out of which one -quarter, namely eight annas, was paid as royalties and divided between the joint authors. As a result of the upheaval Dharam Datt Dhawan and Ram Lal Suri both came to Delhi and it was after that that disputes arose between them regarding the publication of future editions of the Geometry text book. These disputes came to a head early in the year 1949 when on the 4th of January Dharam Datt Dhawan sent a notice to the publishers informing them that he had altogether revoked what he described as the license for publishing his book, while in reply the publishers asserted that under the terms of the agreement between the authors and the publishers the copyright in the work vested in the latter and they intended to publish another edition. About May 1949 apparently they actually produced a tenth edition and put it on sale. In the meantime apparently Dharam Datt Dhawan made arrangements with some other printers for publishing the work and he also put a new edition of it in the market. In both the rival editions only Dharam Datt Dhawan was shown as the author. The first suit was instituted by Dharam Datt Dhawan on 18 -4 -1949, under the Copyright Act claiming that he was the author of the work and that he bad merely granted a license to the publishers to print and publish the book and that since he had subsequently, revoked the license, the publishers were not entitled to print or publish the book and accordingly an injunction restraining Messrs. Ram Lal Suri and Sons from printing, publishing or selling copies of the book was prayed for. The second suit was instituted by the publishers on the 17 -6 -1949 claiming that copyright in the disputed book had been partially assigned to them by the agreement of 21 -12 -1947, and that they were the owners of the copyright so far as printing and publishing of the book was concerned, and they therefore sought an injunction restraining Dharam Datt Dhawan from infringing their copyright by printing and publishing copies of the book and they also prayed for rendition of accounts regarding copies of the book already published and sold by Dharam Datt Dhawan. The third suit was filed on 12 -6 -1950 by Dharam. Datt Dhawan supplementing his previous claim by asserting that now the defendant firm had actually printed, published and sold copies of the work and he also accordingly claimed rendition of accounts regarding these sales. It may incidentally be mentioned that each of the parties claimed to have acquired the interest of the co -author Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in the copyright of the book, Dharam Datt Dhawan claiming that he was now the owner of the whole copyright because Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah's interest in it had been declared to be evacuee property and assigned to him by the Custodian, while the publishers claimed to have purchased Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah's interest for Rs. 750/ - by the agreement of assignment dated 19 -5 -1949.

(3.) THE main issues related to the interpretation of the agreement of 1937 and whether Dharam Datt Dhawan could validly terminate the agreement by his notice dated 4 -1 -1949. On these points the learned District Judge came to the conclusion that by the terms of the agreement the publishers were part owners of the copyright and at the same time found that even if the agreement only amounted to a license to the publishers to print and sell the work, the agreement could not be unilaterally revoked in the circumstances by Dharanx Datt Dhawan. The result was that the two suits in which Dharam Datt Dhawan was the plaintiff were dismissed and the publishers were granted a decree for injunction and rendition of accounts in the suit in which they were the plaintiffs.