The court upheld the plaintiff's copyright infringement claims, confirming ownership and establishing substantial similarity between the plaintiff's works and the defendant's products, which constituted infringement.

Introduction

[1] After a full trial, this Court allowed the Plaintiff's claims for copyright infringement against the Defendant, dismissed the Defendant's counterclaim, and ordered the following:

(i) A permanent injunction to restrain the Defendant, whether acting by himself or otherwise from doing the following acts or things or any of them:

(a) Infringing the Plaintiffs copyright in the Plaintiff's works;

(b) Reproduction in any material form of the Plaintiffs Works and/or in any material form which is identical or similar to the Plaintiffs Works;

(c) Importing to Malaysia, releasing, having in possession to conduct business, distributing in the course of business without license from the Plaintiff, selling, offering for hire, offering or exposing for sale or for hire, exhibiting, or reproducing Plaintiffs Works and/or in any material form which is identical or similar to the Plaintiffs Works and/or infringing the Plaintiffs copyright in any manner;

(ii) Delivery Up Order of all of the Infringing Products which are in the Defendant's possession, power, custody or control;

(iii) An inquiry for damages for infringement of copyright; and

(iv) Costs and interests.

[2] The Defendant now appeals against the whole of that decision and below are the reasons as to how this Court arrived at such decision.

Facts

Plaintiff's Case

[3] Since 2008, the Plaintiff traded in the business of headscarves for Muslim ladies under the trademark "ARIANI". To that end, the Plaintiff conceived, inspired, designed, and created numerous artwork designs for the said headscarves bearing the "ARIANI" trademark with numerous commercial names or titles of works.

[4] The subject matter of this Suit concerns the "ARIANI" headscarves with the following nine (9) commercial names/titles of works (herein after collectively referred to as "Plaintiffs Works"):

(i) Kendra Printed Shawl Eyelash;

(ii) Instant Lunaa 1;

(iii) Chantilly Allegra Printed Shawl Eyelash;

(iv) Instant Lunaa 4;

(v) Instant Layla 1;

(vi) Instant Layla 3;

(vii) Medina Printed Shawl;

(viii) Nura Printed Shawl; and

(ix) Miss D Printed Shawl

[5] Voluntary notifications of copyright for the Plaintiffs Works pursuant to s 26A of the Copyright Act 1987 (" CA ") and reg 5(2) of the Copyright (Voluntary Notification) Regulations 2012 were made by the Plaintiff on various dates in 2017. The voluntary notifications were made on behalf of the Plaintiff by the Plaintiffs representative with the Plaintiffs authorisation pursuant to reg 5(3) of the Regulations. The notifications were filed together with statutory declarations in compliance with para 26A(3)(b) of the and subregulations 5(2) and (3) of the Regulations.

[6] The details of the voluntary notifications are as set out at pp 141-170 of the First Schedule to the Statement of Claim, the brief information of which are as follows:

[7] The Plaintiffs Works were shown to this Court during the trial and marked as exhibits P9-P17.

[8] The Plaintiff had discovered that in the course of the Defendant's trade or business, the Defendant had sold, offered for sale, supplied, offered to supply, distributed, imported, procured, stored, adve