Photocopy for learning is legal, says HC

The ruling comes against the backdrop of a four-year-old suit filed by textbook publishers

Photocopying of textbooks in the course of educational activities does not amount to a violation of copyright, the Delhi High Court said on Friday.

(If a person or an organisation holds the copyright on a piece of writing, music, etc, they are the only people who have the legal right to publish, broadcast, perform it, etc, and other people must ask their permission to use it or any part of it.)

The ruling, which is expected to have implications for educational institutions as well as students, comes against the backdrop of a four-year-old suit filed by textbook publishers — Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Taylor Francis Group (and their Indian subsidiaries) — against the University of Delhi and a photocopy shop, operating on the university's North Campus, for selling copies of compiled course books to college students.

The judgment is in favour of the university and its students, by treating the exemptions from infringement enshrined under the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, on the same footing as the substantive rights of copyright holders themselves.

"Copyright, especially in literary works, is not an inevitable, divine, or natural right that confers on authors the absolute ownership of their creations. It is designed rather, to stimulate activity and progress in the arts for the intellectual enrichment of the public. Copyright is intended to increase and not to impede the harvest of knowledge," the judgment says.

The Bench had in 2012 issued an ad interim injunction in favour of textbook publishers, restraining the making and selling of course book compilations in question.

By that time, the matter had acquired considerable attention from the educational fraternity, with student bodies such as the Association of Students for Equitable Access to Knowledge (Aseak) and Society for Promoting Educational Access and Knowledge (Speak) defending the collegiate cause.

In a bid to protect dissemination of such literary material, the university and student consortiums had made lengthy arguments, citing various fair-use allowances in an attempt to exclude such activities from copyright exclusivity. After conclusion of two-year-long submissions, the court had in 2014, reserved its judgment on the determination of the issue.