Copyright law in India can be traced back to the time when the East India Company decided to extend English Copyright Law, 1847 to territories which were under its control.
This law in 1914 was replaced by the Indian Copyright Act, which was based on the 1911 UK Copyright Act. The Act was however different from the UK 1911 Act in two ways firstly, penal sanctions were introduced for copyright infringement and secondly, the scope of the term “copyright” was modified.
Thereafter came the existing Copyright Act, 1957 (hereinafter “the Act”). Copyright is essentially statutory right there exists no common law right to copyright.[2]ln India, it is governed by the Copyright Act, 1957, the Copyright Rules 1958 and International Copyright Order, 1999 as amended in 1999,1995 and 2000 respectively.
Image Source: nextwavemarketingstrategies.com
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The Act identifies an author, who can be given monopoly to exploit his work for a limited period of time (which is presently life plus 60 years)[5]. In absence of any statutory requirement for registration to entail copyright protection, the moment a work is created or produced, copyright subsists in it.
Moreover, it is a negative right i.e. it is prohibitory in nature- it prevents others from copying or reproducing the work. What is important is that the work should be a literary work, it should be fixed in a medium and it should be original in order to get copyright protection. According to Sec 13 of the Act copyright protection subsists in:
(a) Original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(b) Cinematograph films
(c) Records
Traditionally, civil and common law countries have differed in their approach towards copyright law, due to which there exists a divergence in the objectives of these systems. In modern complex society, provisions have been made for protecting every man’s copyright, whether big or small, having high degree of originality or not.
The word ‘original’ means first in order or which has served as a pattern of which a copy or translation is made- first hand, not imitative, novel in style, character or inventive.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
However, Copyright law does not ask for originality of ideas, but in expression of thought in case of ‘literary work’. However the degree of originality required in a work is of more than trivial or minimal level.
Though originality is not mandated by the Act unlike U.S or UK, yet the sine qua non of copyright is originality.
Though the low threshold of originality is universally recognized in order to ensure dissemination of knowledge, there exists varying standards of originality in different jurisdictions, primarily due to divergent of objective of copyright laws in these countries.