The District Judge of Lucknow has passed an interim injunction against Thomson Reuters and its Indian operations Westlaw and Indlaw – Defendants, for infringing the copyright of Eastern Book Company’s (EBC)-Plaintiffs, law report, Supreme Court Cases (SCC).
The order restrains them from infringing copyright in the SCC law reports and from selling and distributing or making available to the public either through CDs or the internet copies of the databases which infringe the copyrights in SCC during the pendency of the suit.
The court held based on an illustration submitted by the Plaintiffs, that the editorial notes of law books, journals, online journals of the Plaintiffs publishing SCC exactly matched the editorial notes of the Defendants online journals. On this basis the court held that a prima facie case had been established and granted an injunction to the Plaintiffs. The order was granted on 22 August 2012.
14th September 2012 has been set as the date for filing the written statement and framing issues.
The Supreme Court had earlier in the landmark decision of EBC v. D.B. Modak (2008) 1 SCC 1, recognised the copyright of the Plaintiffs law reports. We had covered the judgment in our previous posts available here and here.
We would like to thank Sumeet Malik for bringing this order to our attention.
Does this not amount to Forum Shopping?
There is already a case filed by Eastern Book Company against Thomsons pending before MP High Court on similar grounds i.e. violation of copyright in judgments as laid down in EBC vs DB Modak case. During the pendency of a writ petition against Thomson on the grounds of copyright violation, filing any such present suit, amounts to forum shopping which is also nothing but making a mockery of judicial system.
Kindly give link to the order of DJ Lucknow.
Order is available at another legal site:
http://www.legallyindia.com/images/stories/docs/EBC-v-Thomson-Reuters-Westlaw.pdf
Regards,
Freq. Anon.
Naveen, please could you supply the details of the case pending in the MP High Court? I checked the High Court webiste – could not find anything. This clearly seems to be forum shopping.
Today is 14th September, 2012. Please update the readers about the stand/defence taken by the defendants.
Didn’t westlaw get an injunction against ebc from publicizing it? Do you have a link for that order?