Delhi HC restores copyright suit against photocopying of textbooks for educational purposes

The September 16 adjudication in favour of the University of Delhi and a photocopy shop on campus had come in the backdrop of a four-year-old case

The sale of photocopied textbooks for educational purposes might be under threat once again, after a division bench of the Delhi High Court on Friday restored a copyright suit previously filed by international publishers to restrain the activity before a single judge. The September 16 adjudication in favour of the University of Delhi and a photocopy shop on campus had come on the backdrop of a four year old case filed by textbook publishers — Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Taylor Francis Group (and their Indian subsidiaries).

Aggrieved by the ruling, the publishers had approached the division bench of the court arguing that hundreds of photocopy shops were now selling xeroxed course packs as a result of the verdict, causing huge losses to the publishers. The appellants had also contended that the judgment had erroneously interpreted the provisions of the Copyright Act 1957, resulting in the erosion of the publishers’ proprietary rights and wiping out the basis of copyright law as a whole.

The determination of the single judge had set an important precedent for the applicability of copyright law in educational cases by holding that a copyright in a literary work was not an inevitable, divine or natural right conferred on an author. Holding student interest as paramount, the ruling focused on the aspect of affordability of low-cost textbooks through photocopying and held that copyright law was intended to increase knowledge, not impede it.

However, the division bench headed by Justice Pradeep Nandrajog on Friday determined that key issues related to whether the photocopied material was being used in the course of instruction had not been adequately determined before the delivery the September 16 verdict and ordered the case to be restored as a result.

The court though, refused to restrain the sale of the photocopied textbooks in the interim but instead ordered the photocopy shop to maintain records of all course packs supplied and directed six monthly statements of such sales to be submitted in court.