EASTERN BOOK COMPANY AND OTHERS V. D.B.MODAK AND ANOTHER

INTRODUCTION
Copyright Act is an Act, which protects the right of a person when others use his work without his consent. This law protects the work of any person, which he produces by using his skill, capital and labour. Copyright law protects expressions of ideas rather than the ideas themselves. Under this Act, minimal amount of creativity is required, which makes it different from other works. This Act exists on the principle that when a person produces something using his skill and labour that thing belongs to him and any other person would not be permitted to make profit out of it without the permission of the original author. The object of the Act is to protect the author of the copyright work from an unlawful reproduction or exploitation of his work by others.
Eastern Book Company And Others v. D.B. Modak And Another is a landmark case concerning copyright, it studies different aspects related to infringement and importance of copyright.
FACTS:
• The appellants in the present case are involved in printing and publishing of law report known as “Supreme Court Cases” in which they publish all reported and unreported judgments of Supreme Court of India. The appellants make various changes in the original judgments and make it user friendly by adding many important things that make it clearer.
• Respondent 1, Spectrum Business Support Ltd. has brought out a software called “Grand Jurix” published on CD-ROMs and Respondent 2, Regent Data Tech Pvt. Ltd. Has brought out software package called “The Laws” published on CD-ROMs.
• As per Appellants the all the modules in the respondents software packages have been lifted verbatim from the appellants work. The respondents have copied the appellants’ sequencing, selection and arrangements of cases coupled with the entire text of copied edited judgment as published in the appellants’ law report along with the style and formatting, the copy editing, paragraph numbers, footnote numbers, cross-referencing, etc.
ISSUES:
1. What shall be the standard of originality in the copy- edited judgments of the Supreme Court which is a derivative work and what would be required in a derivative work to treat it as original work of an author and thereby giving a protected right under the Copyright Act, 1957 to the author of the derivative work?
2. Whether the entire version of the copy edited text of the judgments published in the appellants’ law report SCC would be entitled for a copyright as an original literary work, the copy edited judgments having been claimed as a result of inextricable and inseparable admixture of the copy edited inputs and the raw text, taken together, as a result of insertion of all SCC copy- editing inputs into the raw text, or whether the appellants would be entitled to the copyright in some of the inputs which have been put in the raw text?
LAWS INVOLVED
In the present case, main focus is on the following Sections of the Copyright Act, 1957:
•
 • Section 13– Works’ in which copyright subsists-
(1) Subject to the provisions of this Section and the other provisions of this Act, copyright shall subsist throughout India in the following classes of works, that is to say,-
(a) original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works,
(b) cinematograph films; and
(c) sound recordings.
(2)Copyright shall not subsist in any work specified in sub-section (1), other than a work to which the provisions of Section 40 or Section 41 apply, unless,-
(i) in the case of a published work, the work is first published India, or where the work is first published outside India, the author is at the date of such publication, or in a case where the author was dead at that date, was at the time of his death, a citizen of India;
(ii) in the case of an unpublished work other than a work of architecture, the author is at the date of making of the work a citizen of India or domiciled in India; and
(iii) in the case of a work of architecture, the work is located in India.
Explanation-in the case of a work of joint authorship, the conditions conferring copyright specified inthis sub-section shall be satisfied by all the authors of the work.
(3) Copyright shall not subsist-
(a) in any cinematograph film a substantial part of the film is an infringement of the copyright in any other work;
(b) in any sound recording made in respect of a literary, dramatic or musical work, if in making the sound recording, copyright in such work has been infringed.
 Section 14. Meaning of copyright.-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, namely:-
(a) in the case of a literary, dramatic or musical work, not being a computer programme, –
(i) to reproduce the work in any material form including the storing of it in any medium by electronic
means;
(ii) to issue copies of the work to the public not being copies already in circulation;
(iii) to perform the work in public, or communicate it to the public;
(iv) to make any cinematograph film or sound recording in respect of the work;
(v) to make any translation of the work;
(vi) to make any adaptation of the work;
(vii) to do, in relation to a translation or an adaptation of the work, any of the acts specified in relation
to the work in sub-clauses (i) to (vi);
 • Section 17. First owner of copyright.-Subject to the provisions of this Act, the author of a work shall be the first owner of the copyright therein Provided that-
(d) in the case of a Government work, Government shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein;
 • Section 52. Certain acts not to be infringement of copyright. -(1) The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyright, namely:
(q) the reproduction or publication of-
(iv) any judgement or order of a court, tribunal or other judicial authority, unless the reproduction or publication of such judgment or order is prohibited by the court, the tribunal or other judicial authority, as the case may be;
JUDGMENT
The judgment in the present case is not just one sided. The apex court after giving some detail about the arguments of the appellants and the respondents gave its judgment in a very confined but clear way.
The Apex court analyzed each part of the copy-edited judgment of the Appellants and stated that if the inputs put in by the appellants would have a copyright then it would mean that anyone who by his or her own skill and labour creates an original work of whatever character, shall enjoy an exclusive right to copy that work and no one else would be permitted to reap the crop what the copyright owner has sown.
Further, it was stated by the Apex court that no doubt, the appellants have collected the material, improved the readability of the judgment by putting inputs in the original text of the judgment by considerable labour, and arranged it in their own style, but that does not give the flavour of minimum requirement of creativity.as minimal creativity is essential for copyright.
The apex court stated that the ‘SCC Report’ does not as a whole display sufficient originality to amount to an original work of the author. To support copyright there must be some substantive variation and not merely a trivial variation, not the variation of the type where limited ways unique of expression are available and an author selects one of them which can be said to be garden variety. Further, the Apex court stated that novelty, invention, or innovative idea is not the requirement for protection of copyright but it does require minimal degree of creativity.
With the above explanation, the Apex court stated that the inputs put in by the appellants in the copy-edited judgments do not match standard of creativity required for the copyright.
However further the court stated that setting up of paragraphs by the appellants of their own in the judgment entitled the exercise of brain work, reading and understanding of subject of disputes, different issues involved, statutory provisions applicable and interpretation of the same and then dividing them in different paragraphs so that chain of thoughts and process of statement of facts and the application of law relevant to the topic discussed is not disturbed, would require full understanding of the entire subject of the judgment. Thus, this exercise and creation thereof has a flavour of minimum amount of creativity.
Finally, with all the above stated explanation laid down by the Apex Court finally the appeals were partly allowed. Finally, the Apex court held that the respondents should not copy the head notes of the appellants and also the footnotes and editorial notes appearing in the journal. It was further directed by the Apex Court that the respondents should not use the paragraph made by the appellants in their copy edited version for internal references and their editor’s judgment regarding the opinions expressed by the judges by using phrases like “concurring”, “partly dissenting”, etc. on the basis of reported judgments in SCC.
CONCLUSION
Copyright protection finds its jurisdiction in fair play. When a person produces something with his skill and labour,judgment it is his product and all others are excluded from exploiting the work skill and labour of the original author and it is for this reason that the Copyright Act, 1957 gives to the authors certain exclusive rights in relation to the certain works of the author. Basically this Act puts a check on exploitation of the original owner for against the use of his work without his consent.
The above case studies the copyright protection in the copy-edited judgments of the Supreme Court and clearly states that no person can claim copyright on the raw text which is directly taken from the registrar office.
BY: PRIYANKA GANGWAR