To amend Your Copyright Claim, Better hurry lest You miss the Game: Delhi High Court rejects Application for Amendment of Plaint

The Plaintiff claimed that it had commissioned the Defendant in 1995 to compose musical pieces for a dance drama to be produced by the Plaintiff, for which she had been duly remunerated. Following the composition, the Plaintiff made sound recordings with the combination of music, lyrics, choreography and the artists and as per Section 2(uu) of the Act, that made the Plaintiff the owner of those sound recordings.

However, subsequently the Plaintiff had come across audio-cassettes being sold under the title “Shubha Mudgal Ali More Angna”, wherein the Defendant had sung the same composition that she had prepared for the Plaintiff. Moreover, the Plaintiff also claimed that the Defendant had in a letter been known to have stated the Plaintiff as the owner of the said musical composition. It was the Plaintiff’s contention that as the owner of the copyright in the sound recordings comprising that musical composition, it had the exclusive right under S. 14 of the Act to make any other sound recording embodying the composition and/or to sell or give on hire, or offer for sale or hire, any copy of the recording as well as to communicate the recording to the public and therefore, there exists a lawful obligation to seek a license from the Plaintiff for reproduction of any part of the composition, along with payment of necessary royalties, which had obviously not been done in this case.

The original prayer of the Plaintiff included inter alia, an injunction restraining the Defendant from reproducing the Plaintiff’s sound recording of the said dance drama or any other sound recording which the Defendant might have undertaken for the Plaintiff, against the provisions of S. 14(e) of the Act, as well as an injunction restraining the Defendant and the person actually selling those cassettes (Defendant No. 2) from claiming to be duly authorized by the Plaintiff to reproduce, market and sell the impugned audio cassettes and from passing off the musical composition as that of the Plaintiff.

In the application for amendment by the Plaintiff, which brought forth the current judgment under consideration, the latter wished to claim joint authorship rights even over the music composition itself, along with the copyright over the sound recording, on the ground that the said composition had been created by the Defendant at the behest of the Plaintiff, for which the Defendant had been paid due remuneration. In the original plaint, the Plaintiff had only claimed copyright over the recordings and the omission of claiming any right over the composition was further evident in the Plaintiff’s allegation of the Defendant passing off the composition as that of Plaintiff’s. The rights regarding a sound recording fall within S. 14(e), while S. 14(a) cover the domain of musical work. The very fact that the Plaintiff originally claimed a violation of the former provision and not the latter, in the eyes of the judiciary, went a long way to show that the Plaintiff never intended to originally claim for any right over the musical composition itself.

The Defendant’s argument was that at that point of time, the Plaintiff was otherwise barred by limitation to claim for copyright regarding the musical work. Had the Plaintiff tried to file a fresh suit regarding such copyright, it would have been prevented by Order II, Rule 2 of the C.P.C., which requires a plaintiff to include the entire claim he is entitled to regarding a particular cause of action in a suit. Hence allowing the Plaintiff to amend his plaint to such effect would simply mean depriving the Defendant of the right she had acquired through passage of time owing to limitation.

The Court sought to examine the situation under which amendment of plaint can be allowed and accepted it as a settled proposition of law that an amendment should generally be allowed, unless it is shown that permitting the amendment would be unjust and would result in prejudice to the opposite party which cannot be compensated by cost, or would deprive him of a right that has accrued to him with the lapse of time. Justice V. K. Jain went on to say, “Errors or mistakes, if not fraudulent, should not be made a ground for rejecting the application for amendment of plaint or Written Statement. If there is no undue delay, no inconsistent cause of action is introduced and no vested interest or accrued legal right is affected and the application for amendment is not mala fide or will not prejudice the opposite party, the amendment should ordinarily be allowed.”

Justice Jain then referred to several judicial precedents wherein certain principles had been laid down, which ought to be taken into consideration while allowing or rejecting the application for amendment, such as Ravajeetu Builders and Developers vs. Narayanaswamy and Sons and Ors. [(2009) 10 SCC 84], Shiv Gopal Sah alias Shiv Gopal Sahu vs. Sita Ram Saraugi and Ors. [(2007) 14 SCC 120] etc. As a general rule, the Court should decline amendments if a fresh suit on the amended claims would be barred by limitation on the date of application, unless the Plaintiff can establish a reasonable rationale for delay as well as his own bona fides. In the present case, the proposed amendment, if allowed would take away a vested right, which had accrued to the Defendant on account of limitation. Nor did the Plaintiff present any explanation whatsoever for seeking the proposed amendment after 14 years of the filing of the suit, which in turn indicated lack of bona fides on the Plaintiff’s part.

In support of its reasoning, the court also referred to Order VI, Rule 17 of the CPC, which provides that no application for amendment shall be allowed after the trial has commenced, unless the Court comes to the conclusion that in spite of due diligence, the party could not have raised the matter before the commencement of trial. The same mode of reasoning had been followed in Vidyabai vs. Padmalatha [2009 (2) SCC 409], wherein the Supreme Court had observed that the proviso added to aforesaid Rule 17 vide Civil Procedure Code (Amendment) Act, 2002 is couched in a mandatory form and hence such proviso takes away in effect the jurisdiction of the Court to allow an application for amendment, unless the conditions precedent therefor are satisfied. This means that unless the court concludes that despite having exercised due diligence the parties could not have raised the matter before the commencement of the trial, the court cannot allow an amendment of the plaint to take place. Also in Rajkumar Gurawara (Dead) through LRs. Vs. S.K. Sarwagi and Co. Pvt. Ltd. and Anr. [AIR 2008 SCC 2303], this reasoning had been accepted by the Supreme Court.

Thus in the absence of any explanation provided by the Plaintiff in the matter under consideration, regarding why the amendments proposed by way of the present application could not be incorporated either when the suit was filed or when the plaint was first amended, the Court opined amendment could not be allowed after the trial had begun and issues had been framed, since such an action would be in violation of the proviso to Rule 17. Hence the application for amendment was dismissed.

However, what appears to be particularly interesting in this matter was that although the Plaintiff’s claim of joint authorship over the musical composition was barred owing to a procedural lache, viz. limitation, it would have been of considerable significance from a substantive point of law, had the claim been allowed to proceed. Especially in case of sound recordings and the musical works they comprise of, a matter such as this has sufficient potential to delineate the respective rights of producers and artists, given the present discussions regarding amendments in the Copyright Act and increasing rights to artists that are making rounds. Once the original matter is finally decided, the Spicy IP team hopes to bring it forth for another discussion for the benefit of the faithful readers.