Bombay HC rules on the Infringment of Copyright in Drawings

A recent article on Mondaq has reported the judgment of the Bombay High Court in the case of Indiana Gratings Private Limited & Anr v. Anand Udyog Fabricators Private Limited & Ors. While the article provides the following citation -2009 (39) PTC 609 (Bom)- this judgment is as of now unavailable on internet web resources, and so the article will primarily be used as a reference point for the facts and issues. (Any additions or clarifications to this post shall be made by the blogger once the original order is available).

The case revolves, simply, over the existence of copyright in artistic works and the alleged infringement of the same. A European machine imported was found to be unsuitable for Indian conditions and therefore the Plaintiffs herein, incorporated certain improvements and modifications. These changes were initially incorporated in drawings and thus copyright was claimed in such drawings as an artistic work within the meaning of section 2(c)(i) of the Copyright Act. Therefafter, it was alleged that the defendants had stolen the artistic works and reproduced the drawings into a finished products. Being a competitor in the business, the plaintiff’s therefore argued that Anand Udyog was guilty of theft and infringement of copyright existing in the artistic works.

On a primary level, the Court first dismissed the claim of the Defendants that no copyright subsisted in the drawings and they were only registrible under the Designs Act. Keeping in mind Section 2 (d) of the Designs Act, the court stated that the criteria therein was not satisfied by the drawings or the finished articles, and therefore they did not come within the purview of the Designs Act. More succinctly put, the drawings were not indicative of “finished articles” (notwithstanding the fact that the finished article was also not “appealing to the eye”) and served a “mere functional purpose”- both of which would disqualify the drawing from the purview of the Designs Act, 2000.

In this respect, the Court referred to the case of West vs. Francis, (1822) 5. B & Ald. 743 “whereby it was held that a drawing of an industrial product, which could be multiplied by an industrial process, would not qualify as a design under the Designs Act but a copyright as an artistic work.”

Moving on, the claims of Indiana Gratings were refuted by Anand Udyog on two levels:

(a) Indiana Gratings did not hold copyright in the drawings: Their logic in this respect was that since they had copied the drawings from the European machine, this could not be considered as an ‘original work’ and therefore not a copyright within the meaning of Section 2(d) of the Copyright Act. It was further claimed that the drawings were not “artistic works” within the meaning of the Copyright Act.

In this regard, the Court clearly said that the idea-expression dichotomy would come into play. Thus, even though the original idea of the machines in question was that of the European manufacturers, copyright subsisted in the expression which herein was in the form of the drawings which included the modifications and improvements. Next, with respect to the term “artistic work” under Section 2(c)(i), the Court opined that a drawing in the form of a diagram would qualify as an “artistic work” even if it did not portray any artistic quality to a layman.

(b) Anand Udyog claimed that there was no theft and that the drawings were “commonplace shapes based on principles of engineering mechanics” and therefore there was no theft of the drawings of Indiana Gratings. It was however argued by the Plaintiffs that ndiana Gratings retorted stating that the various drawings taken as a whole for various parts of the machinery would fit into one another and when used together did not show commonplace drawings.

The Court relied on the case of L.B. (Plastics) Limited vs. Swish Products Limited, (1979) RPC 551, where the House of Lords states that where there was a striking similarity of the Plaintiff’s and Defendant’s work with proof of access to such work and no alternative to copying was provided, the same would constitute infringement. A similar judgment in this regard was also passed by the Delhi High Court in the case of Escorts Construction Equipment Ltd. & other vs. Action Construction Equipment Pvt. Ltd. & Anr., AIR 1999 Delhi 73 and was take note of by the Courts.

The dimensions of drawings submitted by the co-defendants was found to be “identical to the drawings of Indiana Gratings’, which the Court held to prove beyond doubt that the drawings were copied.” This included specific identifiable marks alongside the copies recovered, the logo, ‘complete name and description of the product along with the legend for the various items in the drawings and a warranty.”

Therefore in this case, taking into account the evidence and the insufficient explanation given as to the origin of the drawings used by Anand Udyog, it was held by the Court that the wrongful use of the drawings of Indiana Gratings would amount to theft.

(c) Lastly, the defendants stated that the copyright of Indiana Gratings existed only in the 2 dimensional form and therefore not in the 3 dimensional finished product.

The Court here held that the use of Indiana Gratings’ drawings would infringe the copyright in their drawings or making any 3 Dimensional objects of machine parts amounting to the reproduction of Indiana Gratings’ drawings.

Analysis:

This judgment once again rakes up distinction of the subsistence of an artistic work and design. But in every other respect, the judgment is extremely straightforward in that if the theft was proven, the use of the same by the Defendants would amount to infringement. Since the judgement is unavailable at the moment to the blogger, it is unclear whether any case law was relied upon to dismiss the last claim of the Defendants with respect to the reproduction of the 2 dimensional drawing to the 3 dimensional finished article. However, the case of British Leyland v. Armstrong Patents,(1986) FSR 221 in this respect would be a clear case in point and should be relied on to remove all doubts as to the subsistence of copyright in the finished product from its 2 dimensional form.