The Plaintiff was stated to be engaged
worldwide in the business of manufacturing, marketing, selling and exporting of
upholstery fabrics directly or through its subsidiaries and affiliates. It
claimed that on all its upholstery fabrics n are printed unique and original
artistic works conceptualized and drawn by and on behalf of the Plaintiff. The Plaintiff claimed that its artistic works
enjoyed copyright protection in India
as a consequence of the Berne and the Universal Copyright Conventions (India and the U.S. being members of the
Conventions). The upholstery fabrics
manufactured and sold by the Defendants were stated to bear artistic works
which were identical or colorable imitations of the Plaintiff’s artistic works and thus constituted
infringement of its copyright therein.
In defence, the Defendants submitted:
(i) the Plaintiff’s artistic works were
actually designs relating to textile products
which were aesthetic, ornamental and visual in nature and thus came within the scope of the Designs
Act, 2000;
(ii) the Plaintiff had failed to register
these designs under the Designs Act,
2000 or under its predecessor Act and, therefore, could not claim protection under the Copyright Act;
(iii) the Plaintiff was itself conscious of
the fact that registration was required
under the Designs Act since it had registered some of its upholstery designs in the U.K. under the
local Designs Act;
(iv) the certificates relied upon and issued by the United States Copyright Office referred to the subject work
as fabric designs and not artistic
works;
(v) the Indian Patent and Design Office
confirmed in writing that the subject
works were register able and being registered under the
Designs
Act, 2000.
In rejoinder, the Plaintiff pointed out
that the definition of “design” under the new Designs Act, 2000 specifically excluded
artistic works and thus did not apply to
its artistic works within the meaning of the Copyright Act, 1957. In other
words, the Plaintiff argued that its upholstery fabric designs could not have been registered under the Designs Act,
2000 by virtue of the exclusion of artistic
works and thus entitled to copyright protection under the Copyright Act.
Consequently, it was stated that the
defence under Section 15 of the Copyright
Act did not apply.
On its part, the Defendants submitted:
(i) that the interpretation advanced by the
Plaintiff would have the effect of
rendering the law of designs redundant
for the simple reason that each design
registered thereunder would be able to trace
its origin to a diagram, chart, drawing and thus cease to be governed by the
Designs Act;
(ii)
this could not have been the legislative intent
because the law of designs is
based on the same principle as that applicable to other monopolies and to fuel industrial
innovativeness by granting limited time limit to the monopolies and allow
others to make use of them after they have passed into the public domain;
(iii) the plea of the Plaintiff, if accepted,
would be anti competitive and would throttle and stagnate the industry;
(iv) that the legislative intent behind the
repealed Designs Act, 1911 and that under the Designs Act, 2000 remained the
same and the exclusion of “artistic
works” in the new definition was only clarificatory and intended to exclude artistic works pure and simple such as paintings, sculptures and works
of art;
(v) the statement of objects and reasons of
the Designs Bill, 1999 provided that the intent was to ensure that the law does
not unnecessarily extend protection beyond what is necessary to create the
required incentives for design activities while removing impediments to the
very use of available designs;
(vi) the proceedings from the Parliamentary
debate also showed that the Act was being amended to provide help and
protecting the rights of designers;
(vii) the hand book issued by the Design
Office for information to the public also specifically stated;
“What can be registered as a Design?
- To qualify for registration as a design,
an article should relate to the ornamental or new shape, surface pattern, lines
or colour with aesthetic look (designs
or industrial plans, layouts or
installation are not registerable).
- It should be applicable to any product
reproducible by industrial means (Paintings / Sculptures and ‘works of art’
excluded).
Finding merit in the defence raised by the
Defendants, the High Court of Delhi dismissed the Plaintiff’s suit for
injunction, holding: “in order for the work of the Plaintiff to qualify as an
“artistic works”, it must fall within the definition of sub section (c ) of
Section 2 of the Copyright Act. A reading of the said provisions would show
that attempt of the Plaintiff can only be to bring it within the concept of
“painting.” The comparison with the
paintings of M.F. Hussain would be otiose as the work in question, in the
present case, is not a piece of art in the form of a painting. There is no
doubt that labour has been put and there is some innovativeness applied to put
a particular configuration in place.
Such configuration is of the motifs and designs which by themselves
would not be original. The originality is
being claimed on the basis of the arrangements made. What cannot be lost sight of is the very
object with which such arrangements or works had been made. The object is to put them to industrial use. An industrial process has to be done to
apply the work or configuration to the textile.
It is not something which has to be framed and put on the wall or would
have any utility by itself. The two
important aspects are the object with which it is made (which is industrial)
and its inability to stand by itself as a piece of art. In fact, it has no independent existence of
itself. In India,
we have special legislation governing the protection of different nature of
rights. Insofar as the industrial
designs are concerned, the protection is provided under the Designs Act,
2000…..An important and relevant aspect is that both under the old Act and the new Act, fabric designs
on textile goods have been classified as proper subject matter of design
protection by inclusion as a specific
class in the Rules framed
under the Acts…
Furthermore, the legislative intent is also
to be kept in mind which is to provide protection for a certain period of time
for commercial exploitation. Thus,
nature of protection is quite different for an artistic work under the
Copyright Act which is for the life time of the author / creator + 60 years. This is not so in the case of commercial exploitation
as under the Designs Act and the Patent Act, the period is much lesser. In the present case, the configuration was
made only with the object of putting it to industrial /commercial use.”
In view of the above findings, the High
Court of Delhi dismissed the suit.
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