Extent of right prolicted.

The appellant in this case is one, V. Govindan, the 1st defendant in O.S. No. 5 of 1948 on the file of the District Judge, Madurai. He was the proprietor of Sakti Karyalayam of Madras, and published an English-English-Tamil Dictionary, Exhibit A-2, in 1947. The second defendant, one T.N. Subramanian of Madras (who has not appealed) was its compiler. The plaintiff, E. M. Gopalakrishna Kone, a publisher of Mathurai, had published in 1932 itself, an English-English-Tamil Dictionary called the Excelsior Junior School Dictionary, the predecessor of Exhibit A-1, compiled by one K.V. Subba Iyer, a retired District Educational Officer. He sued the appellant and T.N. Subramannian, the 2nd defendant, who compiled Exhibit A-2 for the appellant, for an injunction restraining them and their servants from editing, publishing or selling any of the copies of the Dictionary, Exhibit A-2, and for directing them to render true and proper accounts regarding the publication, sale of the Dictionary, Exhibit A-2, alleged to constitute an infringement of his copyright in Exhibit A-1, and for costs.

The defendants set up various defences, like Exhibit A-2 being an original compilation by the 2nd defendant for the 1st defendant and not amounting to any infringement of Exhibit A-1, Exhibit A-1 itself being" a common mechanical thing not capable of having any copyright, an injunction being unthinkable, in the circumstances, seeing the commonness of dictionaries and the inevitable sameness of most of the words and meanings in all the dictionaries, the unjustifiability. of asking for accounts in such matters, etc.

The lower Court framed the following issues:

(1) Is the defendants’ book a piratical reproduction of the plaintiff’s Dictionary?

(2) Has there been any infringement of plaintiff’s rights, as alleged in the plaint?

(3) Is the plaintiff entitled to an injunction?

(4) Is the plaintiff entitled to accounting, and, if so, what is the basis of accounting?

(5) To what relief is the plaintiff entitled?

The plaintiff examined P.W. 1 on his behalf and filed Exhibit A-1 to A-12. P.W. 1, a B.A., L.T., spoke to his comparing Exhibits A-1 and A-e in detail and finding Exhibit A-2 to be a piratical reproduction of Exhibit A-1; he filed Exhibits A-7 to A-12 to prove it. The defendants examined D.W. 1, the 2nd defendant, on their behalf and filed Exhibits B-1 to B-13. D.W. 1 admitted that he was never a teacher, and had never compiled any dictionary, and that he did not know the Tamil meanings of several common English words, and yet had given in Exhibit A-2 the very meanings given in Exhibit A-1.

After discussing the entire evidence, the lower Court came to the conclusion on issue (1), that the defendants’ book, Exhibit A-2 was a piratical reproduction of the plaintiffs Dictionary, Exhibit A-1. It went through the books Exhibits A-1 and A-2 minutely, and found page after page, word after word slavishly copied, including the errors, and found the sequence, the meanings, the arrangement and everything else practically the same, except for some deliberate differences introduced here and there in order to cover up the piracy. It rejected the argument of the defendant that Exhibit A-2 was an original work of defendant 2, and foiihd that it was merely a slavish copy of Exhibit A-1 with deliberate differences introduced to cover up the copying. It rejected the argument of the defendants that the 2nd defendant had copied only from the earlier Tamil-English Dictionaries of Percival and Swaminatha Iyer from which Mr. K.V. Subbier, the author of Exhibit A-1 had also copied, and held that the 2nd defendant had copied in Exhibit A-2 almost everything from Exhibit A-1 though he might not have copied a few words and their meanings, out of the 12,654 words in his dictionary. On issue (2), it found that the plaintiff’s rights in Exhibit A-1 had been infringed by the defendants’ publishing Exhibit A-2. On issue (3), it found that the plaintiff was entitled to an injunction. On iss