selection as the plaintiff had made obviously required extensive reading, careful studying and comparison and the exercise of taste and judgment to make a selection for himself. But, if one spares himself this trouble and adopts some other person’s selection, he offends against the principle. The Court was of the opinion that the selection of poems made by the plaintiff and embodied in the Golden Treasury was the subject of copyright and that the defendant’s book had infringed that right.
30. These decisions are the authority on the proposition that the work that has been originated from an author and is more than a mere copy of the original work, would be sufficient to generate copyright. This approach is consistent with the “sweat of the brow” standards of originality. The creation of the work which has resulted from little bit of skill, labour and capital are sufficient for a copyright in derivative work of an author. Decisions propounded a theory that an author deserves to have his or her efforts in producing a work, rewarded. The work of an author need not be in an original form or novel form, but it should not be copied from another’s work, that is, it should originate from the author. The originality requirement in derivative work is that it should originate from the author by application of substantial degree of skill, industry or experience. Precondition to copyright is that work must be produced independently and not copied from another person. Where a compilation is produced from the original work, the compilation is more than simply a re-arranged copyright of original, which is often referred to as skill, judgment and or labour or capital. The copyright has nothing to do with originality or literary merit. Copyrighted material is that what is created by the author by his skill, labour and investment of capital, maybe it is derivative work. The courts have only to evaluate whether derivative work is not the end-product of skill, labour and capital which is trivial or negligible but substantial. The courts need not go into evaluation of literary merit of derivative work or creativity aspect of the same.
31. Mr. P N Lekhi, learned senior counsel appearing for the respondents in C.A. No. 6472/2004 has submitted that the judgment of the court is a government work as defined under Section 2(k)(iii) and on account of Section 17 (d), the Government in the absence of any agreement to the contrary be the first owner of the copyright therein. Section 52(1)(q)(iv) provides that the publication of any judgment or order of a court, tribunal or other judicial authority, unless the reproduction of publication of such judgment or order is prohibited, would not constitute an infringement of the copyright. Therefore, publication of the judgments of the apex court by the respondents would not tantamount to infringement of the copyright of the appellants. It is further urged that the judgments published in the Supreme Court Cases is nothing but merely a derivative work based upon the judgments of the court, which lacks originality as it does not depict independent creation even a modicum of creativity. The inputs put by the appellants is nothing but expressing an idea which can be expressed in a limited way and as such there cannot be a copyright. Filling the blanks or gaps by providing names of the parties or citations of the judgments, both of which are well known and unchangeable parts of that idea, are not original work. These are not creative at all to warrant copyright protection, either singly or in combination. The additions made in the reported judgment by the editors of
