Delhi High Court grants permanent injunction against publisher using fictitious author’s name for publishing book
In a recent case in Delhi High Court, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has filed a suit for permanent injunction restraining infringement of copyright and for the rendition of accounts.
It came to the notice of IGNOU that Dominant Publishers and Distributors (Defendant) had published a book titled ‘Modern Communication Technologies’ under the authorship of Mr. Y.K. D’Souza and several pages of the IGNOU’s course material had been reproduced in it.
Defendant pleaded that this work was based on the fundamentals of electronics which is a part of physics/science. Further, it pleaded that it was only a publisher and not the author of the book in question. It is also claimed by Defendant that the content in question is contained in various other books as well.
Delhi High Court held that on the basis of the evidences Defendant appears to have used a fictitious author’s name for publishing the infringing book.
Further, Delhi High Court added that “Plaintiff’s work is an original literary work under Section 2(o) of the Copyright Act, 1957. The Plaintiff has exclusive rights to reproduce the same in any form including the print or electronic form. Copying of even a small extract of the original work constitutes infringement. In the present case, the Defendants have copied almost two full chapters of the Plaintiff’s course work. Thus, the Defendants are clearly guilty of infringing the Plaintiff’s copyright.”
You can read this entire judgment by clicking here.
Author credits: Tushar Bhargava, Co-founder MikeLegal
