Page:Eastern Book Company & Ors vs D.B. Modak & Anr.pdf/54

http://JUDIS.NIC.IN photocopy service for Law Society members, the judiciary and other authorized researchers. Under the custom photocopy service, legal materials are reproduced and delivered to the requesters. The Law Society also maintains self-service photocopiers in the Great Library for use by its patrons. The respondents, CCH Canadian Ltd., Thomson Canada Ltd. and Canada Law Book Inc. publish law reports and other legal materials. The law book publishers commenced copyright infringement action against the Law Society claiming ownership of copyright in 11 specific works on the ground that the Law Society had infringed copyright when the Great Library reproduced a copy of each of the works. The publishers further sought permanent injunction prohibiting the Law Society from reproducing these 11 works as well as any other works that they published. The Law Society denied liability and submitted that the copyright is not infringed when a single copy of a reported decision, case summary, statute, regulation or a limited selection of text from a treatise is made by the Great Library staff or one of its patrons on a self-service photocopier for the purpose of research. The Court was called upon to decide the question as to what shall be the originality in the work of compilation. On consideration of various cases, it was held that to be original under the Copyright Act the work must originate from an author, not be copied from another work, and must be the product of an author’s exercise of skill and judgment. The exercise of skill and judgment required to produce the work must not be so trivial that it could be characterized as a purely mechanical exercise. Creative works by definition are original and are protected by copyright, but creativity is not required in order to render a work original. The original work should be the product of an exercise of skill and judgment and it is a workable yet fair standard. The sweat of the brow approach to originality is too low a standard which shifts the balance of copyright protection too far in favour of the owner’s right, and fails to allow copyright to protect the public’s interest in maximizing the production and dissemination of intellectual works. On the other hand, the creativity standard of originality is too high. A creative standard implies that something must be novel or non-obvious - concepts more properly associated with patent law than copyright law. By way of contrast, a standard requiring the exercise of skill and judgment in the production of a work avoids these difficulties and provides a workable and appropriate standard for copyright protection that is consistent with the policy of the objectives of the Copyright Act. Thus, the Canadian Supreme Court is of the view that to claim copyright in a compilation, the author must produce a material with exercise of his skill and judgment which may not be creativity in the sense that it is not novel or non-obvious, but at the same time it is not the product of merely labour and capital.

38. It is the admitted position that the reports in the Supreme Court Cases (SCC) of the judgments of the Supreme Court is a derivative work in public domain. By virtue of Section 52(1) of the Act, it is expressly provided that certain acts enumerated therein shall not constitute an infringement of copyright. Sub-clause (iv) of clause (q) of Section 52(1) excludes the reproduction or publication of any judgment or order of a Court, Tribunal or other judicial authority, unless the reproduction or publication of such judgment or order is