Registration Is Not Compulsory

In one line

Copyright arises the moment a work is created and fixed. Registration is optional, it proves nothing conclusively, and a suit does not fail because a work was never registered.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: registration is not a condition precedent to the subsistence of copyright or to the maintenance of a suit for infringement, because section 45 of the Copyright Act, 1957 says an owner "may" apply, section 44 says particulars "may be entered", and section 48 gives an entry the value of prima facie evidence only.

Why this is the examinable question

Because it looks wrong. Every other kind of intellectual property in India needs registration. A patent is granted, a trade mark is registered, a design is registered. Copyright is the exception, and students assume the rule.

Because two Bombay judgments went opposite ways. One held registration compulsory in 2012 and the other held that decision per incuriam in 2021.

And because the practical advice is the opposite of the legal answer. The law says you need not register; a practitioner says register anyway. Both are right, for different reasons.

The argument from the text

Section 13(1): "Copyright shall subsist throughout India in the following classes of works". It says nothing about registration.

Section 44: particulars "may be entered" in the Register, while the Office "shall" keep it. Two verbs, deliberately different.

Section 45(1): the persons named "may make an application". Permissive.

Section 48: the Register "shall be prima facie evidence of the particulars entered therein". A rule of evidence, not a rule of title.

Section 51: copyright is infringed when a person does an act the exclusive right to do which is conferred on the owner. It says nothing about registration, and it is the section that creates liability.

And section 55: the owner is entitled to all remedies by way of injunction, damages, accounts and otherwise. It speaks of the owner, not of a registered owner.

The case law, in order

The high water mark of the contrary view. In Dhiraj Dharamdas Dewani v. Sonal Info Systems Pvt. Ltd., 2012 3 MhLJ 888, the appellant had written accounting software for tax practitioners, his competitors lodged a first information report under sections 63 and 65, the police seized material from his office, and he sued under section 60. On the question of law the court held that registration is compulsory: reading sections 44, 45, 48, 50A, 51, 63 and 64 together, "may" in section 45 must be read as "shall", because a police officer could not be satisfied who owns an unregistered copyright and a criminal court could not attribute knowledge of ownership to an infringer, so without registration it would be impossible to enforce the remedies under the Act.