Indian Universities receive Copyright Wake-up Call

After years of unlimited photocopying of whole academic and other literary works, India’s universities have been reminded of their copyright obligations by an order passed in a civil suit of the Delhi High Court. Three Academic Publishers – Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor Francis had sued Delhi University and a shop in the Delhi School of Economics campus, Rameshwari Photocopy Services, which had been commercially reproducing course packs based on their books and without any authorization. The publishers claimed that the copying infringed the rights of authors and publishers which were protected by the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 1957. The High Court ordered all material related to the copying of these books to be seized, sealed and handed over to the court.

The decision was welcomed by the Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation which represents authors and publishers and which offers licenses to regularize the copying under the Copyright Act. “Historically, universities have tended to ignore the licenses that we offer”, said IRRO Secretary General Anand Bhushan, “Let’s hope, for the sake of the students as well as the rightholders of literary works, that this will change,” he added.