Interim Injunction Against Thomson Reuters Confirmed on Same Terms as SC’s Reed Elseiver Order

The Allahabad High Court has, on appeal, confirmed the interim injunction granted against Thomson Reuters in a suit by Eastern Book Company (EBC) for copyright infringement, on the same terms as the one granted to EBC against Reed Elseiver. As we had reported here, Supreme Court had confirmed the interim injunction granted to EBC for alleged infringement of its copyright by Reed Elseiver over the copyedited and modified judgments, and had also remitted the matter back to the trial court for expedited trial.  We had earlier exhaustively covered the orders passed by the trial court in these suits. In fact, as Prashant had noted, the orders do not deviate from the position laid down by Supreme Court in EBC v. D.B. Modak (“EBC case”) and only reiterates what was said in the above decision. Just to recap, the crux of the decision in EBC case was that although no claim for copyright may be raised as against the publication of a judgment, which has only been copyedited (i.e., editing of spelling, grammatical errors, punctuations etc.), a valid claim for copyright may be made as against versions which have been elaborately edited in terms of identifying the nature of each judge’s opinion (concurring, dissenting, partly concurring etc.) as well as insertion of page and para numbers of the judgments, which have been internally referred to in the reported judgments. With the latest order, the dicta in EBC seems to have crystallised even further.