Delhi high court virtually busts ‘property’ rhetoric in the IPR narrative

In a momentous decision, the Delhi high court has ruled that the making of course packs for the purpose of study was well within the bounds of the law and did not amount to copyright infringement. The lawsuit dates back to 2012 when leading publishers such as Oxford University Press (OUP) and Cambridge University Press (CUP) sued Delhi University and its authorised photocopier for copyrights infringement of their various publications and procured a temporary restraining order against them. Thereafter, a group of students and academics intervened and a vigorous battle ensued in court. Nearly four years later, Justice RS Endlaw came down on the side of the defendants and dismissed the lawsuit outright. The judge opined that section 52(1)(i) of the Copyright Act which exempted copying for the purpose of educational instruction was wide enough to cover the acts of the defendants.

Coming at a time when intellectual property rights are driven more by lobbies and less by logic, this decision is a landmark. One that cements India’s reputation as a country that refuses to hitch itself to a global IP paradigm, propounded in large part to propel the industrial interests of western economies. And one that recognises that educational access is the norm, and copyright the exception!

Indeed, as the judge rightly notes: copyrights are not “divine”, but purely man-made artefacts. A quick sojourn through history teaches us that its genesis as a formal legal instrument owed itself to extensive lobbying by printers who convinced the English queen to grant them monopoly. The rights of authors came much later; almost as an after-thought, struck up to garnish copyrights with a sweet romantic appeal. This appeal continues to dominate the narrative today, despite the fact that authors are often at the receiving end of the bargain, earning much less from their creative wares than those that package it for them (namely publishers). This was a point that was poignantly made by many of us to the court; not just as a theoretical surmise, but backed by a signed document from a number of authors whose works were allegedly copied in the creation of the DU course-packs. They decried the lawsuit and declared that they were happy for students to photocopy their works, given that students were anyway never the main “market” for these expensive tomes. 

There is some concern with the alleged breadth of the decision in that one might argue that it legitimises the reproduction of the entirety of a book. Two points bear noting here. For one, there was no instance of full text copying in the specific set of facts before the judge; rather only excerpts of books were reproduced and compiled into creative course packs designed by the university. Indeed, as was demonstrated during the course of arguments by many of us (as defendants), most of the alleged copying involved no more than 10 per cent of a copyrighted book. Secondly, the plain language of the statute (section 52(1)(i)) does not lend itself immediately to any qualification (in terms of the quantum of copy-able content). As such, the judge may not have thought it fit to draw out a distinction between full text copying and the more limited course-pack copying. However, in order to quell concerns on this count, here is a tentative suggestion: The applicability of the educational defence under section 52(1) (i) could be made to turn upon a “reasonable nexus” test: Is the nexus between copying and the furtherance of educational instruction a reasonable one? Put another way, how necessary is it to copy the copyrighted work for the purpose of educational instruction? If the full text is necessary reading for the course in question and such text is not available at a reasonable price to students, then making copies ought to be permissible under the exception. In this regard, it bears noting that the defendants cited empirical research to demonstrate that the latest editions of a number of leading text books were simply not available in India and had to be imported at considerable cost.

In many ways, this law suit was really about kick-starting the fortunes of the IRRO (Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation), a collecting society of sorts. Publishers argued that universities could easily procure photocopy licences from the IRRO at allegedly “cheap” rates. However, the judge rightly rubbished this argument, noting that a license was not required when the law itself carved out a defence from infringement. Falling into the IRRO trap was a dangerous one, and defendants demonstrated to the court that collecting societies abroad had sharply hiked their licensing fees over the years, causing Canadian universities to walk out of these arrangements. Worse still, music-collecting societies in India had a notorious history of alleged extortion, and are currently being investigated by the government.

While lawyers will continue to split hairs on the details of this decision, there is no gainsaying the fact that it signals a profound shift in our copyright paradigm. For the judge has effectively provoked a progressive frame, where copyright is seen as the exception and access to knowledge the norm. As such, the various defences under section 52 (including education) are not mere exceptions, but broad-based user rights, which, when invoked,  militate against the very notion of “infringement” itself.

Telling enough, the judge comes close to busting the “property” rhetoric that has plagued the IPR narrative for far too long; and consigned copyrights to their proper place as mere regulatory tools, meant to balance the private incentives of creators against the larger interests of the public in accessing knowledge and improving on it. This decision comes close on the heels of another copyright controversy involving a monkey selfie, with PETA arguing that the simian ought to own copyright in its image. If the mere click by a monkey is sufficient to crown the image with copyright, should we be really calling this “intellectual” property? 

The time is now ripe to discard this false terminology. I propose that we relabel “intellectual property” (IP) as the “Regulation of Distinctive Information” (RDI); for that is what they really are. Not necessarily intellectual, and certainly not property. But a species of distinctive information that must be regulated in the larger interests of society. A regulation that demands that access to knowledge be the norm. And copyright the mere exception! 

The author is the Founder of SpicyIP and was part of SPEAK (Society for Promotion of Educational Access and Knowledge), a group of academics who had intervened in this dispute as defendants.