7. The appellants have claimed that the copyright subsists in SCC as a law report as a whole based cumulatively and compendiously on all the substantial contributions of skill, labour and capital in the creation of various parts of SCC, i.e., headnotes, editorial notes, footnotes, the version of the copy-edited text of judgments as published in the appellants’ law report SCC, the selection of cases as published in SCC, the sequence and arrangement of cases as published in SCC and the index, table of cases, etc. which are published in each volume of SCC, that give it the SCC volumes and thereby complete SCC set, its character as a work as a whole. The appellants claim that the copyright subsists in the copy-edited version. The appellants do not claim copyright in the raw text of the judgments, certified copies of which are obtained from the Registry. The appellants do not claim a monopoly in publishing judgments of the Supreme Court as they are being published by other publishers also without copying from each other publication. The appellants claim that their copyright is in the copy-edited version of the text of judgments as published in SCC which is a creation of the appellants’ skill, labour and capital and there are contributions/inputs/ additions of the appellants in creating their version of the text of judgments as published in SCC. The appellants placed before us the following contributions, inputs and additions made by them to the text in the certified copies of the judgments received by them from the Registry. The appellants assert that originality inheres in the following aspects of its editorial process which are selected, coordinated and
arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of the appellants.
MATTER ADDED PER SE TO THE RAW TEXT OF THE JUDGMENTS
1. Cross-citations are added to the citations(s) already given in the original text
For example,
a. SCC/AIR/LLJ citations added in addition to the SCR citation given in the text and cross-citations separated by “:”
Raw text obtained from Registry:
SCC Page:
Corresponding citations from SCC Page:
