‘Copying texts for study doesn’t violate copyright’

NEW DELHI: Students in Delhi University and nearby can continue to buy photocopy material of international textbooks sold by shops such as Rameshwari Photocopy Service, for now. The Delhi high court on Friday ruled that copying extracts of original material, including of those brought out by international publishers, is exempt from copyright claim as long as it is justified by the purpose for which it is used.
“Purpose” and “utility” of the photocopied material (content of the extract and needs of curriculum) decide if there has been any violation or there has been “fair use”, a bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Yogesh Khanna held, sending the suit filed by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and others against Rameshwari shop back to the single judge to conduct a trial on these parameters.
Batting for free knowledge as long as original work is not misused, the HC observed that “the law in India would not warrant an approach to answer the question by looking at whether the course pack has become a textbook, but by considering whether the inclusion of the copyrighted work in the course pack was justified by the purpose of the course pack i.e. for instructional use by the teacher to the class and this would warrant an analysis of the course pack with reference to the objective of the course, the course content and the list of suggested readings given by the teacher to the students.”
Friday’s verdict means publishers will have to prove before the single judge that their original work is being copied and misused for commercial gain and not for use in course of instruction by teachers to pupils.
While restoring the suit lost by the publishers earlier, the division bench said it was “not inclined” to grant interim stay to the foreign publishers but added that there are “triable issues” involved in the lawsuit seeking to restrain the shop in the varsity campus from selling photocopies of textbooks.
To facilitate inquiry, the court ordered the photocopy shop to maintain a record of course packs photocopied by it and supplied to students and file a report in court every six months, disposing of the appeal filed by publishers and posting the matter for further proceedings before the single judge on January 4, 2017.
It also cited a 2012 report of a court-appointed local commissioner who found that entire textbooks had been copied and sold by the shopkeeper, not just extracts for course packs.
The publishers had appealed against the single judge order allowing Rameshwari Photocopy Service to sell photocopies of their textbooks on the ground that copyright in literary works does not confer “absolute ownership” to the authors.
But the larger bench differed, saying the legal issue revolves around interpretation of Section 52(1)(i) of the Copyright Act, 1957 as the photocopy shop and other defendants have admitted photocopying pages from the publications in different proportions.
It also disagreed with publishers’ argument that DU is to be blamed for encouraging photocopy instead of stocking its library with purchased books. “Role of the university ends when its academic council lays down the course curriculum. Thereafter, the individual teacher or the teachers acting collectively for a particular degree course sit down and prescribe the relevant reading material to be read by the students keeping in view the objective of the course as per the curriculum,” the HC noted.
“The next exercise done by the teacher or the teachers would require eclectic selection of reading material and this would be the copyrighted works. This would constitute the reading material for the pupils, to be used by the teacher in the class room in course of instruction,” he added.