In John Wiley & Sons Inc & Ors v Prabhat Chander & Ors Delhi High Court held that the “provision for international exhaustion is absent in our Indian law”. As a result exporting a book intended solely for sale in the Indian sub-continent to countries outside it would be an infringement of copyright.
The plaintiffs – international publishers of low price editions (LPE) of textbooks for sale in India and its neighbouring countries – were seeking to restrain the export of their books to countries outside the Indian sub-continent. The defendants – online booksellers selling LPEs worldwide – used the doctrine of first sale to argue that the plaintiffs could not control the resale of these LPEs.
Delhi High Court, however, said that the Copyright Act, 1957, gives a copyright owner the right to exploit his copyright by assigning and licensing it for a particular period or territory. As such copyrights could simultaneously be exhausted in some territories and alive in others.
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The update of court judgments is compiled by Bhasin & Co, Advocates, a corporate law firm based in New Delhi. The authors can be contacted at lbhasin@bhasinco.in or lbhasin@gmail.com. Readers should not act on the basis of this information without seeking professional legal advice.
