Copyright Essay

INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT

Copyright law confers upon the owner of the work a bundle of exclusive rights in respect of the reproduction of the work and other acts which enables the owner to get financial benefits by exercising such rights. If any of these acts relating to the work is carried out by a person other than the owner without a license from the owner or a competent authority under the act, it constitutes infringement of copyright in the work. Since copyright is granted only for a limited period, there will be no infringement if the reproduction of the work or other acts concerned is carried out after the term of copyright is expired. Accordingly, the type of acts which will constitute infringement will also depend upon the nature of the work. The exclusive rights granted under the act extend also to a translation or adaptation of the work or to substantial part thereof. Thus copyright will be infringed if a substantial part of the work is reproduced. What amounts to a substantial part of the work will depend upon the circumstances of the case.

Since the forms of creative works are numerous, that is literary, dramatic, musical and artistic etc., the acts which would constitute infringement would depend upon the nature of the work. Section 51 of the Copyright Act defines infringement of a copyright not specifically with respect to each kind of creative work, but in general terms. The general principle is that no infringement of the plaintiff’s rights takes place where a defendant has bestowed such mental labour upon what he has borrowed and has subjected it to such revision and alteration as to produce an original result. The defendant is not at liberty to take away the result of another man’s labour or the benefits ar...

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...the situations, however generally, Indian courts have applied both qualitative and quantitative test of substantiality and the literal number of words copied has not been held to be a determinative factor. The courts have recognized that the terminable quantum of extracts or quotations will depend upon the facts of each case.

As we have seen, any unauthorized use of a copyrighted work may amount to infringement of copyright. However, the copyright law allows people to make some free uses of the copyrighted works. In India, the list of these free uses has been laid down in Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957. The rationale behind these free uses is to strike a balance between the interests of the copyright owners and the interests of the society at large. We will discuss in detail the concept of these exceptions to copyright infringement in the following chapters.