HC refuses to get swayed by foreign courts’ judgments

NEW DELHI: Judgments passed by foreign courts and cited by international publishers failed to convince the Delhi high court to rule in their favour in the DU photocopy case.
On Friday a bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Yogesh Khanna said contents of the photocopied course packs and its relevance to the DU curriculum would decide if copyright law has been violated. It also rejected some of the precedents from abroad saying these had little persuasive value since the rulings were passed under different circumstances.
To bolster their case, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis Group referred to judgments on similar issue passed by courts of United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.
While partially agreeing with the publishers that “there has to be fairness in every action” and “it must be read into the statute” the bench pointed out that offshore case laws have to be referred to with care and caution.
“While it is true that winds from across the border should be welcome in a country, but care has to be taken to retain the fragrance thereof and filter out the remainder,” it observed.
The court underlined that “Language used in a statute covering a field of law in different municipal jurisdictions may be different and we caution ourselves that some minor points of details here and there and difference in the language here and there may assume importance,” the bench said.
For instance in the case of US, the bench noted that law on copyright in connection with teaching includes multiple copies for classroom use but is governed by doctrine of fair use. “The statute has an expansive definition as to what would be fair use and lists four fair use factors. The decisions by Court in America would therefore have no persuasive value in the Indian context,” it added.
However, the HC did find some utility in a judgment cited from New Zealand where “course of instruction” had been protected from copyright infringement.