missing from the original text of the judgment; added the number of the Section/Rule/Article/paragraph to the extract quoted in the original text; added the names of Judges on whose behalf opinion given by giving expressions such as “for himself and Pathak, C.J.” etc.; done verification of first word of the quoted extract and supplied emphasis on such verification; added ellipsis “…” to indicate breaks in quoted extract; provided and supplied the matter inadvertently missed in quoted extracts in the original text of the judgment; completed/corrected the incomplete/incorrect case names or citations; renumbered correctly the clauses/sub-clauses in terms of the questions framed which were numbered in terms of answers to questions framed by learned Judge; changed the text as per corrigenda issued, which has been issued upon SCC Editor’s request and suggestions; done compressing/simplification of information relating to the case history; followed certain norms at SCC for giving case names; omitted the words like “Section”, “Sec.”, “Rule”, etc. and given only the number of the Section/rule at the beginning of the quoted extract; made margin heading and the first clause/sub-section or initial matter of section/rule etc. to run-on instead of being let to start from a fresh line; done compressing of unquoted referends and use of *** for parts; replaced the series of dots in the raw text with ellipsis; removed abbreviations such as sec., R., cl. and substituted them with full word, i.e. Section, Rule, clause; added hyphenation after the section/rule numbers which have alphabets suffixed to them; applied indentation of quoted extracts; removed full stops or word “No.”; and given full forms of abbreviations to enhance readability and clarity. In addition to the above, capitalization and italicization is also made wherever necessary in the raw text; and punctuation, articles, spellings and compound words are also checked and corrected, if required, in the original text.
40. The aforesaid inputs put by the appellants in the judgments would have had a copyright had we accepted the principle that any one who by his or her own skill and labour creates an original work of whatever character, shall enjoy an exclusive right to copy that work and no one else would be permitted to reap the crop what the copyright owner had sown. No doubt the appellants have collected the material and improved the readability of the judgment by putting inputs in the original text of the judgment by considerable labour and arranged it in their own style, but that does not give the flavour of minimum requirement of creativity. The exercise of the skill and judgment required to produce the work is trivial and is on account of the labour and the capital invested and could be characterized as purely a work which has been brought about by putting some amount of labour by the appellants. Although for establishing a copyright, the creativity standard applies is not that something must be novel or non-obvious, but some amount of creativity in the work to claim a copyright is required. It does require a minimal degree of creativity. Arrangement of the facts or data or the case law is already included in the judgment of the court. Therefore, creativity of SCC would only be addition of certain facts or material already published, case law published in another law report and its own arrangement and presentation of the judgment of the court in its own style to make it more user- friendly. The selection and arrangement can be viewed as typical and at best result of the labour, skill and investment of capital lacking even minimal creativity. It does not as a whole displayPage:Eastern Book Company & Ors vs D.B. Modak & Anr.pdf/56
