LLM Group 3 Law of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Copyrights Law and other related rights 2024-25 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: two limbs, and the examiner has named the section for the first. Do not define copyright in general words; the Indian Act defines it operationally in section 14 and the marks are in explaining what that means: a bundle, exhaustive, exercisable over a substantial part, and a right to do OR AUTHORISE. Then the second limb, which is section 13 read with the six sub-definitions in section 2, and here IN DETAIL means going through each class with its own definition and its own peculiarity. Add the three conditions in section 13(2), (3) and (4) that a work must satisfy, because a work can be within section 2(y) and still attract no copyright. Work three cases and close on what copyright is NOT.

What section 14 does

Section 14 provides: "For the purposes of this Act, 'copyright' means the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT subject to the provisions of this Act, to DO OR AUTHORISE THE DOING of any of the following acts in respect of a work or ANY SUBSTANTIAL PART THEREOF..."

It is exhaustive. An act not within one of the clauses is not an infringement however unfair it seems. This is the structural reason Indian law has no general fair use doctrine and no misappropriation tort in copyright, and section 16 confirms it: no person shall be entitled to copyright otherwise than under and in accordance with the provisions of the Act.

It extends to a SUBSTANTIAL PART. Taking part of a work infringes if the part is substantial, and substantiality is qualitative rather than quantitative. This is the textual basis of the whole law of substantial similarity, of which the governing statement is R.G. Anand v. Delux Films, (1978) 4 SCC 118: there is no copyright in an idea, subject matter, theme or plot; infringement is confined to the form, manner and arrangement of expression; and the surest test is whether the reader, spectator or viewer gets the unmistakable impression that the later work is a copy of the earlier.

It covers authorising as well as doing. A person who authorises an infringing act infringes, which is the basis on which organisers, commissioners and platforms that positively encourage infringement are liable.

Literary work, section 2(o). The definition is INCLUSIVE: it includes computer programmes, tables and compilations including computer databases, and it therefore also carries the ordinary meaning. Literary merit is irrelevant. Novels, articles, letters, lyrics, examination papers, catalogues, timetables and source code are all literary works. What the courts have refused to protect is a TITLE standing alone: Krishika Lulla v. Shyam Vithalrao Devkatta, (2016) 2 SCC 521, holds that there is no copyright in the title of a work, because a title is not itself a work.

Dramatic work, section 2(h). It includes any piece for recitation, choreographic work or entertainment in dumb show, the SCENIC ARRANGEMENT OR ACTING FORM of which is FIXED IN WRITING OR OTHERWISE, but DOES NOT INCLUDE a cinematograph film. Two peculiarities: fixation is expressly required, which it is not for a literary work; and a film is excluded because it is separately protected.

Musical work, section 2(p). A work consisting of MUSIC, including any graphical notation of it, but NOT including any words or any action intended to be sung, spoken or performed with the music. So the tune and the lyric are two different works with two different authors, the composer and the lyricist, and two separate terms.

Originality, which governs only the first class

Section 13(1)(a) requires literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works to be ORIGINAL, and the Act does not define the word.

The classical statement is University of London Press Ltd v. University Tutorial Press Ltd, [1916] 2 Ch 601: the word does not require original or inventive THOUGHT; copyright is concerned with the EXPRESSION of thought, and what is required is that the work should not be copied but should ORIGINATE FROM THE AUTHOR.

The Indian standard is Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 SCC 1. The appellants published copy-edited law reports and complained that their reports had been reproduced on CD-ROM. The Supreme Court rejected the English sweat of the brow test, which would protect mere labour, and the American requirement of novelty, and adopted a middle standard: originality requires a MINIMAL DEGREE OF CREATIVITY, which is skill and judgment and not merely capital, labour and effort. Applying it, no copyright subsisted in the raw text of the judgments, which fall in the public domain under section 52(1)(q), but copyright did subsist in the publisher's own additions: paragraph numbering, the division of opinions and the notation of concurrence.

Section 13(3), the derivative bar. No copyright subsists in a cinematograph film if a substantial part of it is an infringement of the copyright in any other work, nor in a sound recording made in respect of a literary, dramatic or musical work if in making it the copyright in that work has been infringed.

Section 13(4), the layering rule. The copyright in a film or a sound recording does NOT affect the separate copyright in any work in respect of which the film or recording is made. This is the provision that makes a single recorded film song carry four copyrights: the lyric, the composition, the sound recording and the film.

Conclusion. Section 14 defines copyright as the exclusive right, subject to the Act, to do or authorise the doing of the enumerated acts in respect of a work or any substantial part of it. Five things follow: it is negative in operation, bounded by the Act's own exceptions and licences, a divisible bundle rather than a single right, exhaustive so that an unlisted act is not an infringement, and infringed by taking a qualitatively substantial part. The rights differ by class of work, and the classes are defined exhaustively by section 2(y) and elaborated in six sub-definitions, of which the operative peculiarities are that literary work is inclusive and indifferent to merit, dramatic work requires fixation and excludes films, musical work excludes the lyric, artistic work disregards artistic quality except for craftsmanship, and film and sound recording disregard the medium. Copyright subsists in such a work only if it is ORIGINAL in the sense of Eastern Book Company, only if the connecting factors in section 13(2) are satisfied, not at all if it is itself an infringement, and without prejudice to the separate copyrights that section 13(4) preserves.