LLM Group 3 Law of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Copyrights Law and other related rights 2015 Question Paper with Solutions

SECTION 13 makes copyright subsist in WORKS, that is, in literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, films and sound recordings, and not in subjects, themes or information. SECTION 14 defines copyright as the exclusive right to do listed acts IN RESPECT OF A WORK OR ANY SUBSTANTIAL PART OF IT, so the right attaches to the work as expressed. SECTION 16 provides that no person shall be entitled to copyright otherwise than under and in accordance with the Act, which closes the door on any parallel right in the idea itself.

The international texts put it expressly. ARTICLE 9(2) OF THE TRIPS AGREEMENT provides that copyright protection shall extend to EXPRESSIONS AND NOT TO IDEAS, PROCEDURES, METHODS OF OPERATION OR MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS AS SUCH, and ARTICLE 2 OF THE WIPO COPYRIGHT TREATY repeats it. ARTICLE 2(8) OF THE BERNE CONVENTION excludes news of the day and miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information.

The leading Indian authority

R.G. Anand v. Delux Films, (1978) 4 SCC 118. The plaintiff had written and staged a play called Hum Hindustani, about provincialism and the obstacles it creates to a marriage between families from different provinces. The defendants made a film, New Delhi, on the same theme. The plaintiff said they had seen his play and copied it.

As a violation of copyright amounts to an ACT OF PIRACY, it must be proved by CLEAR AND COGENT EVIDENCE.

Where the alleged copying is of a STAGE PLAY BY A FILM, the plaintiff's task is harder still, because the two media present a story differently and a film has a much broader perspective.

The Court applied these and found that although both works dealt with provincialism, the treatments were materially different and the film could not be called a copy of the play.

The three doctrines that make the rule workable

Merger. Where an idea can be expressed in only one way, or in very few ways, protecting the expression would protect the idea. The expression is then said to MERGE with the idea and is denied protection. The doctrine descends from Baker v. Selden, 101 US 99 (1879), where the United States Supreme Court held that a book explaining a system of bookkeeping was protected as a book, but that the RULED ACCOUNT FORMS necessary to use the system were not, because to protect them would be to give the author a monopoly of the system itself. Indian courts apply the same reasoning to forms, rules of a game and functional layouts.

Where the proposition needs qualifying

An idea developed into a concrete form is protected. In Anil Gupta v. Kunal Dasgupta, 2002 (25) PTC 1 (Del), the plaintiff had developed a detailed concept for a television programme in which a woman would choose a husband from a field of suitors, and had disclosed it in confidence to the defendants, who then announced a similar programme. The Delhi High Court granted an injunction. It held that the IDEA of a matrimonial reality programme was not protectable, but that the plaintiff's concept note, worked out in detail with its format, its stages and its treatment, was a CONCRETE MATERIAL FORM in which the idea had been expressed, and that in any event its disclosure in confidence founded an action for BREACH OF CONFIDENCE independently of copyright.

The case states the true position. The line is not between important ideas and trivial ones; it is between an idea NOT YET WORKED OUT and an idea WORKED OUT INTO A FORM. The more detailed the working out, the more of it is protected.

The rule in its newest setting

The divide is now being worked out for machine learning. In ANI Media Private Limited v. OpenAI, order of 24 July 2026, the Delhi High Court dealt at the interim stage with a news agency's claim that its copyright works had been used to train a large language model and were being reproduced in its answers. On the idea and expression point the Court held that what the plaintiff could protect was its EXPRESSION and not the FACTS it had reported, so that an output conveying the same information in different words did not infringe, while a substantially similar reproduction of the agency's own text would. The proposition is exactly the one R.G. Anand v. Delux Films laid down for a play and a film, applied to a technology that did not exist when it was decided, and it is the strongest available answer to the suggestion that the idea and expression divide has become obsolete.

What "material form" actually requires

The proposition ends with the words "material forms", and they need care.

Conclusion. The proposition is sound as far as it goes. Sections 13, 14 and 16 protect WORKS and not ideas; Article 9(2) of TRIPS says so in terms; and R.G. Anand v. Delux Films is the Indian authority, holding that there is no copyright in an idea, theme or plot, that the question is whether the similarities go to FUNDAMENTAL OR SUBSTANTIAL ASPECTS OF THE MODE OF EXPRESSION, and that the safest test is the unmistakable impression of a copy formed by the ordinary reader or viewer. The rule is made workable by MERGER, illustrated by Baker v. Selden, by SCENES A FAIRE, and by the treatment of compilations in Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak. It needs two qualifications. An idea WORKED OUT INTO A CONCRETE FORM is protected, as Anil Gupta v. Kunal Dasgupta shows, and what copyright will not protect the law of CONFIDENCE and of contract often will. And "material form" does not import a general requirement of fixation: only a dramatic work must be fixed, and the phrase describes how the expression is reproduced rather than a condition of its existence.