The Delhi High Court on Friday restarted the protracted, landmark legal case that questions whether photocopying study material for course packs is a violation of copyright.
The case restarted because major publishers such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis re-appealed after losing a 4-year-long case against Rameshwari Photocopy Service, located in Delhi School of Economics in north campus.
The publishers claimed that the photocopy shop's actions violated copyright laws and caused huge financial losses to the companies but on September 16 decision they were handed an unfavorable decision by Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw who had held that held that preparing course packs were not in violation of copyright.
On Friday however, a bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Yogesh Khanna did not impose an interim injunction on DU's Rameshwari Photocopy Service and instead granted them reprieve by allowing it to continue preparing course packs on the condition that it files a record of the same in the suit every six months.
"We declare that the law in India would not warrant an approach to answer the question by looking at whether the course pack has become a textbook, but by considering whether the inclusion of the copyrighted work in the course pack was justified by the purpose of the course pack i.e. for instructional use by the teacher to the class and this would warrant an analysis of the course pack with reference to the objective of the course, the course content and the list of suggested readings given by the teacher to the students. This would require expert evidence, " said the bench while remanding the matter for trial.
The suit is restored for trial on the issue of fact and for which parties would be permitted to lead expert witness testimony," the bench added.
