Committed to enabling access to learning materials: Publishers after HC decision

Global publishing houses like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis today said they are fully committed to the ongoing creation of high quality knowledge and learning materials across all disciplines and subjects.
The publishers earlier in the day got partial relief from the Delhi High Court which restored their lawsuit which was dismissed by a single judge.
A division bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Yogesh Khanna setting aside part of the September 16 judgement of the single judge, who had allowed sale of photocopies of textbooks by saying there was "no triable issue" arising out of the dispute.

In a joint statement after the high court decision, the publishers said they are also committed to finding ways to enable students and researchers around the world to access these materials on an equitable basis.
"We believe that such access can only be ensured on a long term and sustainable basis with the support of a fair and balanced framework of reciprocal rights and obligations that enables all those involved in the provision of learning and communication of scholarly research to be acknowledged for the contribution they have made.
"Through this appeal, we had sought to clarify that Indian copyright law did indeed support such a framework, and in so doing balance the interests of those creating learning materials here in India, with those requiring access to them in a fair and sustainable manner," it said.

The publishers said they will consider this judgement in more detail over the coming days.

"In the meantime, we wish to reiterate that all publishers continue to work on models that will enable equitable access to knowledge," they said.
The publishers had approached the division bench against the single judge order which had allowed the shop, Rameshwari photocopy services, to sell photocopies of their textbooks saying copyright in literary works does not confer "absolute ownership" to the authors.
Rameshwari photocopy service runs a shop in the precincts of Delhi School of Economics in the Delhi University campus.
The publishers had argued before the bench that sale of photocopies of books published by them affected their market share and it was infringing upon their copyright over the text books.