Madras High Court
Chellappaswamy vs K.P. Singaravelu Mudaliar And Ors. on 14 September, 1915
Equivalent citations: 30IND. CAS.721
ORDER
1. There is a provision in Section of the Copyright ct of 1847, that a certified copy of the entry in the Copyright Register Book is prima facie evidence of the proprietorship of the person mentioned therein, to the copyright of the book in question. Such prima facie proof cannot be said to have been rebutted by anything in the complainants statements before the Magistrate. That provision has no doubt, been repealed by the new Act of 1914 and though the new Act grants, by Section 24, Clause (a), of the first Schedule to the owners of existing copyrights, rights at least as valuable as the rights given under the repealed Act, the rule of evidence is not reproduced in the new Act.
2. Assuming, therefore, that the complainant ought to prove his case, Section 114 of the Evidence Act can be invoked in his favour Further, his statements before the Magistrate do not show that he claimed to be the joint author of the work as stated by the Magistrate.
3. The further statement attributed to him that the author himself made the first publication, is evidently a mistake. The Magistrates statement of the complainant obtaining the copyright by making a false declaration, is rather far-fetched, as he have denied the authorship of his deceased guru and the certificate of 1888 on which the Magistrate relies, for this observation itself clearly mentions in the first column that the work was produced by the complainants Guru.
4. In the result acting under Section 15 of the Charter Act as was done by Oldfield, J., in Ganga Reddi v. Samarapathy Mudali 21 Ind. Cas. 681 : 38 M. 512 : 25 M.L.J. 510 : 14 Cr. L.J. 633 we shall set aside the Magistrates order of discharge and direct further enquiry into the second complaint of the petitioner. The further enquiry will be held by a Presidency Magistrate other than the Magistrate whose order we are reversing by these proceedings.