The protection for designs on upholstery fabrics falls under the Designs Act, and not the Copyright Act. Registration under the Designs Act is necessary to claim copyright protection for such designs.

SANJAY KISHAN KAUL, J.

( 1 ) THE plaintiff s grievance of violation of its copyright in the artistic works applied to upholstery fabrics and the allegation of an attempt to pass off the goods of the defendants as that of the plaintiff has given rise to the present litigation.

( 2 ) THE plaintiff is a company incorporated under the laws of the USA and is stated to be engaged worldwide in the business relating to manufacturing, marketing, selling and exporting of upholstery fabrics directly or through its subsidiaries and affiliates. The brand name of the plaintiff is stated to be microfibres. The business of the plaintiff is stated to have commenced in the year 1926 and the plaint states that on the upholstery fabrics are printed, unique and original artistic works which are conceptualized and drawn/printed by either its employees or other persons who have assigned the copyright in the works to the plaintiff. More than 1000 people are stated to be employed by the plaintiff and a global annual turnover is stated to be more than $ 200 million. The plaintiff s product under the brand name Microfibres is stated to be sold in more than hundred countries including India and has wide presence in the manufacture and sale of synthetic nylon flox fabric and velvet upholstery fabric.

( 3 ) THE plaintiff claims to have extensive international reputation with manufacturing bases and operations in several countries of the world and there are more than 250 brands of microfibres which are apparently sold in India. The plaintiff claims to have obtained registration of copyright of most of its original artistic works in the drawings applied by it on upholstery fabric and the details of such registration are set out in para 7 of the plaint. However during the course of arguments, the plaintiff concentrated the claim in respect of some of these artistic works in respect of which it was alleged that the defendants had violated the copyright. The details of the same are as under:

( 51 ) THE plea of the plaintiff is also sought to be negated on the issue of definition of a design under Section 2 (d) of the Designs Act, 2000 whereby an artistic work as defined in clause (c) of Section 2 of the Copyright Act has been specifically excluded. The submission was, thus, advanced that this would have the effect of rendering the law of designs redundant for the simple reason that each design registered thereunder would be able to trace its origin to a diagram, chart, drawing, etc. and, thus, cease to be governed by the Designs act. The legislative intent could not have been this because the law of designs is based on the same principle as applicable to other monopolies and to fuel industrial innovativeness by granting limited time-limit to the monopolies and allow others to make use of them after they have passed into the public domain. Thus, the plea of the plaintiff, if accepted, would be anti-competitive and would throttle and stagnate the industry. Learned counsel referred to judgment of the Privy Council in Interlego A. G. v. Tyco Industries Inc. , (1988) R. P. C. 343 wherein it has been observed as under:"the definition of design in section 1 (3) of the Act of 1949 is hardly a model of Parliamentary draughtsmanship and this is by no means the first case in which its meaning and application have been called in question. In approaching he question of construction there has to be borne in mind that the purpose of the Act, as appears both from its terms and its legislative history, is to protect novel designs devised to be applied to (or, in other words, to govern the shape and construction of ) particular articles to be manufactured and marketed commercially. It is not to protect principles of operation or inventions which, if protected at all, ought to be made the subject-matter of a patent. Nor is it to prevent the copying of the direct product of original artistic effort in producing a drawing. Indeed the whole purpose of a design is that it shal

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