Lord Atkinson :-

The action out of which this appeal has arisen was brought by the appellants to restrain the respondents, K. and J. Cooper, a firm carrying on in Bombay the trade and business of publishers of educational books, from printing, distributing or otherwise disposing of copies of a certain book published by them hereinafter described, and to recover damage and other relief. The ground on which this relief was claimed was that the appellants were entitled to the copyright of a certain book entitled "Plutarch's Life of Alexander, Sir Thomas North's Translation. Edited for Schools by H.W.M. Parr, M.A.," and that the respondents by the publication subsequently in the year 1918 of their aforesaid book entitled "Plutarch's Life of Alexander the Great, North's Translation, edited with Introduction, Marginalia, Notes and Summary by A. Darby, M.A.," had infringed the copyright to which the appellants were entitled in the earlier compilation.

The text of the appellants' book consisted of a number of detached passages, selected from Sir Thomas North's translation, words being in some instances introduced to knit the passages together so that the text should as far as possible, pres