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 CASE NAME
Eastern Book
Company v. D.B
Modak on 12
december 2007
BENCH: B.N.AGRAWAL
AND P.P.NAOLEKAR
CASE NO.: APPEAL(CIVIL)
6472 OF 2004
DATE OF
JUDGEMENT:12/12/2007
 FACTS OF THE CASE
 Eastern book company A(1) and eastern book publisher A(2) are
the appellant(A) who are into publishing law books.
 The appellant publish law reports containing supreme court cases
by the name of “Supreme Court Cases(SCC). The law report
SCC was commenced in the year 1969 and has been in
continuous publication ever since.
 The judgement are copy edited and several inputs such as font,
paragraphing are made so as to make it user friendly, it also has
foot note and headnote which is being prepared by the A(3)
Surendra Malik.
 The Respondent (R) have created a software which is published
on a CD ROM by the name of “Grand Jurix and the Law” and
the (R) have copied the whole module from SCC on the CD
ROM.
 PROCEDURAL HISTORY
 EBC moved to the Single bench Judge of the Delhi high court
claiming for temporary injunction as the (R) has constituted
infringement by copying the copy edited version of the judgement
prepared by EBC.
 The bench didn’t grant injunction and held that the edited
judgement was not copyright and hence there is no infringement.
(R) conceded that they only have copyright over headnote and
footnote hence agrees not to copy them.
 (A) moved to Division bench of the Delhi High court the court
also didn’t granted the injunction and held that by making some
changes in original judgement it doesn’t change the characteristics
of the judgement and hence it doesn’t constitute as original work.
 The (A)filed the present appeals by special leave petition (under
article 136 of constitution of India) in the supreme court.
 APPELLANT CONTENTION

The appellant do not claim a monopoly in

publishing judgement of the supreme court as they
are being published by the other publishers also
without copying from each other publication.
The appellant claim that their copyright is in the
copy-edited version of the text of judgement as
published in SCC which is a creation of the
appellants skills , labour and capital and there are
contributions/inputs/additions of the appellant in
creating their version of the text of the judgements
published in SCC.
 RESPONDENT’s
CONTENTION
 Judgement published in the supreme court cases is
nothing but merely a derivative work based upon the
judgements of the court, which lacks originality as it
does not depict independent creation even a modicum of
creativity. The inputs put by the appellants are nothing
but expressing an idea which can be expressed in a
limited way and as such there cannot be a copyright.
 For claiming protection of copyright in a derivative
work, originality means only that the work was
independently created by the author as opposed to
copied from other works, and that it possess at least
some minimal degree of creativity.
 ISSUES
1) What shall be the standard of originality in a
derivative work to get copyright protection and
what requirement need to be there for its
fulfilment?

2) Whether the whole copy-edited version of the

judgement will be entitled for copyright or only
entitled to some of the inputs made in the
judgement?
 SECTION INVOLVED
 Section 13&14- as per the appellants , SCC is law
report which carries case reports comprising of
the appellant version or presentation of those
judgement and orders of supreme court after
putting various inputs in the raw text and it
constitutes an original literary work of
appellants in which copyright subsist under
section 13 of the copyright act 1957and thus the
appellants alone have exclusive rights to make
printed as well as electronic copies of the same
under section 14 of the act.
 DOCTRINE OF MODICUM OF
CREATIVITY
 This doctrine stipulate that originality subsists
in a work where a sufficient amount of
intellectual creativity.
 The standard of creativity need not be high but
a minimum level of creativity should be there
for copyright protection.
 This doctrine overrule the doctrine of “sweat of
brow”.
 SUPREME COURT
JUDGEMENT
 Supreme court of India notes :-
 “novelty or invention or innovative idea is not the
requirement for protection of copyright but it does
require minimal degree of creativity”.
 Under such a standard, the court held that mere copy-
editing ( clerical corrections ,syntax , etc.)wouldn’t
qualify as they did not involve “creativity”, but skill
expended in writing head-notes , foot-notes and
editorial notes would qualify. The supreme court
therefore “restrained the respondent from copying
headnotes ,footnotes, and editorial notes appearing in
their law journals”.
 OU
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