Copyright can be claimed in head-notes, footnotes, and editorial comments prepared with labor, skill, and originality. Mere corrections and arrangements in the text of judgments do not confer copyright.

( 1 ) EASTERN Book Company, a well known publishing concern had filed two suits bearing Nos. 624/2000 and 758/2000 before this Court for permanent injunction restraining infringement of copyright, moral rights, unfair competition, damages etc against the respondents. The appellant is a publisher of a well-known journal known as Supreme Court Cases. It allegedly reports all reportable and unreportable judgments of the Supreme Court. In 1996, the second appellant introduced a data based package on CD-ROMs for finding out the Supreme Court rulings known as SCC-Online Case Finder. The respondents launched a software package entitled "the Laws" and "jurix". The said suits were founded, inter alia, on infringement of copyright and unfair competition. Copyright was claimed in the copy-editing of the judgment. According to the appellant, the respondent had copied the said notes and copied the text of the judgment as published in the SCC and thereby infringed its copyright.

( 2 ) VARIOUS interim applications were filed for injunction and interim orders of injunction was passed in the suits from time to time. However, the respondent filed applications for vacation of the stay order. The said IAs filed by the parties were taken up for hearing together and by reason of the impugned judgment dated 17. 1. 2001, a learned Single Judge of this Court dismissed the appellant s applications for injunction. However, before the learned Single Judge the respondent conceded that appellants have copyright of head notes and as such they undertook not to reproduce these head notes in their CD ROMS.

( 3 ) BY order dated 9. 3. 2001 applications for injunction filed in both the suits were dismissed, the operative portion whereof reads as follows :-

"accordingly, it is ordered that during the pendency of these appeals the respondents will be entitled to sell their CD-ROMs with the text of the judgment of the Supreme Court along with their own head notes which should not in any way be copy of the head notes and the text of the Appellants".

( 4 ) ALLEGING willful violation of the said order the appellant also filed a CCP Nos. 402/01 and 377/01. The respondents also filed an application for clarification of the said order.

( 5 ) MR. Sunil Gupta, the learned counsel for the appellants would submit that although the appellants cannot claim any copyright in the judgments which is within the public domain and is covered by Section 14 of the Copyright Act, but in relation to the other matters as specified in the plaints, they are so entitled.

( 6 ) IN the said process, effort, imagination, and skill of the Chief Editor of the SCC is involved. It was a common case of both the parties that the judgments of the Supreme Court are in public domain and nobody can claim copyright therein. However, the argument of Mr. Gupta counsel for the appellant was that for publication of these judgments in their journal - SCC - the appellant is made upon certified copies thereof from the Registry of the Supreme Court, which forms the raw material. The appellants through their editor and other employees etc. apply labour, skill, expertise and expenditure and thereafter the judgments are published in SCC. In the process not only punctuation marks like coma, semi colon etc are added in the text of the judgment but also corrections are made in the judgment for which the consent is obtained from the Hon ble Judge concerned, the author of the said judgment. Head notes and long notes are prepared and editorials, wherever necessary are added. This is ultimate product involving labour and skill of the appellant in which the appellant has copyright.

( 7 ) THE copyright is claimed in three broad heads - i) original literary work; ii) editorial work comprising of selection, sequence and arrangement of head notes, editorial notes and comments, para numbers, verification, cross citation, pre-reference and footnotes; and iii) copy-editing works and proof reading.

( 8 ) LEARNED counsel wo