{"id":1619,"date":"2018-11-30T16:21:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T10:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/1619"},"modified":"2025-06-19T10:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T05:09:10","slug":"copyright-infringement-bharat-law-house-wadhwa-case-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/copyright-infringement-bharat-law-house-wadhwa-case-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Copyright Infringement: Bharat Law House vs. Wadhwa"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div>First Publication Date: 13th June 2010<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Supreme Court vacated Interim Application passed in favor of plaintiff and also allowed<\/div>\n<div>the IA in favor of defendants. This case is a hearing of interim application before<\/div>\n<div>Supreme Court while main suit was pending for trial.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>Case Facts<\/b><\/div>\n<div>Well-known authors Ratanlal and Dhirajlal wrote books on IPC, CrPC, Evidence Act,<\/div>\n<div>Torts, Law of Crimes and Bombay Criminal Cases. All these six books were assigned to<\/div>\n<div>the defendants by Mrs. Mary. Later, assignor and the defendants had a legal dispute<\/div>\n<div>which was finally settled by a compromise decree in court. As per decree, defendants<\/div>\n<div>were entitled to assignment of 4 books out of 6; they are IPC, Law of Torts, Evidence Act<\/div>\n<div>and CrPC. Later, Mrs. Mary assigned Law of Crimes to the plaintiff. Both these<\/div>\n<div>assignments transferred all copyrights, without any reservations, in those books.<\/div>\n<div>Plaintiff filed an interim Application praying to impose a restriction on the defendants,<\/div>\n<div>their representatives, servants and dealers from publishing, printing, selling, enlarging<\/div>\n<div>and abridging of the textbook on IPC, under the pretext that the defendants were<\/div>\n<div>misrepresenting book on Law of Crimes, which was assigned to him, by publishing<\/div>\n<div>enlarged version of IPC as a commentary for advocates instead of a student edition. The<\/div>\n<div>trial Court passed an injunction in favor of the plaintiff.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Issues and Analysis<\/div>\n<div>Issue 1: Does enlargement of a book on the subject of law amount to infringement of<\/div>\n<div>copyright?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Holding<\/div>\n<div>Enlargement of a book on a subject of law by the assignees of copyright will not amount<\/div>\n<div>to infringement by misrepresentation.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Analysis<\/div>\n<div>As per the agreement of assignment between the defendants and Mrs. Mary the assigner<\/div>\n<div>had transferred all of the copyrights in said book. Defendant devolves from the agreement<\/div>\n<div>all rights of printing, reprinting, publishing, selling and also abridging, reviewing and<\/div>\n<div>enlarging the book. A textbook on the subject of law will not have space in the market<\/div>\n<div>unless and until it is reviewed by including amended law and latest case laws. His<\/div>\n<div>Lordship held that the defendant could review and also enlarge or abridge the book as per<\/div>\n<div>the assignment of rights from Mrs. Mary and that it is not an infringement of copyright of<\/div>\n<div>the plaintiff.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Issue 2: Is the injunction granted by the trial court maintainable?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Holding and Analysis<\/div>\n<div>The injunction granted by the trial court is not maintainable because under settled law, to<\/div>\n<div>grant injunction, there must be three important requisites; right in prima facie, the balance of<\/div>\n<div>convenience and irreparable loss. From the aforementioned discussion under Issue 1, it is<\/div>\n<div>clear that the plaintiff has no prima facie right in restraining the defendants from<\/div>\n<div>publishing the book and as there is no right, the vacation of injunction to plaintiff will not<\/div>\n<div>cause any imbalance to <span style=\"background-color: #f6d5d9;\">the convenience<\/span>\u00a0of the parties. On the other hand, continuity of<\/div>\n<div>the injunction in the future will cause irreparable loss to the defendants who invested a lot in<\/div>\n<div>publishing the said books.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Supreme Court vacated the injunction passed by the trial court in favor of the plaintiff<\/div>\n<div>and allowed the Interim Application filed by the defendants. It allowed them to publish<\/div>\n<div>and review the book on IPC in its enlarged version. The court also approved the price<\/div>\n<div>enhancement by the defendant by considering the charges of reproduction, such as cost<\/div>\n<div>of papers, printing expenditure<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>To know more about BananaIP (Earlier known as Brain League) visit <a href=\"https:\">bananaip.com<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Bharat Law House vs. Wadhwa, the Supreme Court examined whether enlarging a law book by an assignee amounts to copyright infringement. The Court held that such enlargement was within the assigned rights and vacated the injunction against the defendants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":54,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,7],"tags":[6852,7340,7785,31,1043,2024,5619,9231],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyrights","category-intellectual-property","category-media-and-entertainment-law","tag-assignment-of-copyright","tag-book-publishing","tag-case-law","tag-copyright-infringement","tag-indian-copyright-law","tag-injunction","tag-legal-analysis","tag-supreme-court-cases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137769,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/137769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}