1938 All. 266, the plaintiffs were the printers and publishers of the books. The book titled “Sachitra Bara Kok Shastra” was printed for the first time in 1928 and had run into four editions since. The defendants printed and published another book titled “Asli Sachitra Kok Shastra” in 1930. The plaintiffs’ case was that the book published by the defendants was a colorable imitation of their book and an infringement of plaintiffs’ copyright. It was held by the Court that the plaintiffs compiled their book with considerable labour from various sources and digested and arranged the matter taken by them from other authors. The defendant instead of taking the pains of searching into all the common sources and obtaining his subject matter from them, obtained the subject matter from the plaintiffs’ book and availed himself of the labour of the plaintiffs and adopted their arrangement and subject matter and, thus, such a use of plaintiffs’ book could not be regarded as legitimate. It was held that a person whose work is protected by copyright, if he has collected the material with considerable labour, compiled from various sources of work in itself not original, but which he has digested and arranged, the defendant could not be permitted to compile his work of like description, instead of taking the pains of searching into all the common sources and obtaining the subject-matter from them and to adopt his arrangement with a slight degree of colourable variation thereby saving pains and labour which the plaintiff has employed. The act of the defendant would be illegitimate use. The Court held that no one is entitled to avail himself of the previous labour of another for the purpose of conveying to the public the same information, although he may append additional information to that already published.
24. In V. Govindan v. E.M. Gopalakrishna Kone and Another, AIR 1955 Madras 391, the respondents had published an English-English Tamil Dictionary in 1932. The appellants were the publishers of similar Dictionary in 1947. An action was brought regarding the publication and sale of the dictionary by the appellants which was alleged to be constituting an infringement of the respondents’ copyright. The lower court went through both the books minutely and found, “page after page, word after word, slavishly copied, including the errors, and found the sequence, the meanings, the arrangement and everything else practically the same, except for some ‘deliberate differences’ introduced here and there to cover up the piracy”. The High Court referred to Copinger and James on Law of Copyright wherein the law has been neatly summarized that : “In the case of compilations such as dictionaries, gazetteers, grammars, maps, arithmetics, almanacs, encyclopaedias and guide books, new publications dealing with similar subject-matter must of necessity resemble existing publications, and the defence of ‘common source’ is frequently made where the new publication is alleged to constitute an infringement of an earlier one.” The Court held that in law books and in books as mentioned above there is very little amount of originality but the same is protected by law and “no man is entitled to steal or appropriate for himself the result of another’s brain, skill or labour even in such works.” The Court further clarified that where there is a ‘common source’, the person relying on it must prove that he actually went to the common source from where he borrowed, employing his own skill, labour and brains and that he did not merely copy.
25. In C. Cunniah & Co. v Balraj & Co., AIR 1961 Madras 111, the appellant firm was carrying on the business
