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21. In Kelly v. Morris, (1866) LR 1 Eq. 697, School of thought propounded is that, at least in respect of compilations, only time and expenses are necessary which is industrious collection.

The plaintiff was the owner and publisher of the first directory. The defendant came out with another directory. The plaintiff sought an injunction against the defendant to restrain the publication of the defendants directory on the allegations that the defendant was guilty of appropriating the information contained in the plaintiffs directory and obtained the benefit of many years of incessant labour and expense. The defendant, on the other hand, contended that there had been no unfair or improper use of the plaintiffs work. Information which was given in the plaintiffs directory was entitled to be used and adopted as long as he did not servilely copy it. The defendant had bestowed his independent time, labour and expense on the matter and thus had in no way infringed the copyright of the plaintiff. Granting injunction, the Court held that in the case of a directory when there are certain common objects of information which must, if described correctly, be described in the same words, a subsequent compiler is bound to set about doing for himself that which the first compiler has done. In case of a road- book, he must count the milestones for himself. In the case of a map of a newly discovered island he must go through the whole process of triangulation just as if he had never seen any former map, and, generally he is not entitled to take one word of the information previously published without independently working out the matter for himself, so as to arrive at the same result from the same common sources of information, and the only use that he can legitimately make of a previous publication is to verify his own calculations and results when obtained. The compiler of a directory or guidebook, containing information derived from sources common to all, which must of necessity be identical in all cases if correctly given, is not entitled to spare himself the labour and expense of original inquiry by adopting and re-publishing the information contained in previous works on the same subject.

23. In Gopal Das v. Jagannath Prasad and Another, AIR 1938 All. 266, the plaintiffs were the printers and publishers of the books. The book titled Sachitra Bara Kok Shastra was printed for the first time in 1928 and had run into four editions since. The defendants printed and published another book titled Asli Sachitra Kok Shastra in 1930. The plaintiffs case was that the book published by the defendants was a colorable imitation of their book and an infringement of plaintiffs copyright. It was held by the Court that the plaintiffs compiled their book with considerable labour from various sources and digested and arranged the matter taken by them from other authors. The defendant instead of taking the pains of searching into all the common sources and obtaining his subject matter from them, obtained the subject matter from the plaintiffs book and availed himself of the labour of the plaintiffs and adopted their arrangement and subject matter and, thus, such a use of plaintiffs book could not be regarded as legitimate. It was held that a person whose work is protected by copyright, if he has collected the material with considerable labour, compiled from various sources of work in itself not original, but which he has digested and arranged, the defendant could not be permitted to compile his work of like description, instead of taking the pains of searching into all the common sources and obtaining the subject-matter from them and to adopt his arrangement with a slight degree of colourable variation thereby saving pains and labour which the plaintiff has employed. The act of the defendant would be illegitimate use. The Court held that no one is entitled to avail himself of the previous labour of another for the purpose of conveying to the public the same information, although he may append additional information to that already published.

24. In V. Govindan v. E.M. Gopalakrishna Kone and Another, AIR 1955 Madras 391, the respondents had published an English-English Tamil Dictionary in 1932. The appellants were the publishers of similar Dictionary in 1947. An action was brought regarding the publication and sale of the dictionary by the appellants which was alleged to be constituting an infringement of the respondents copyright. The lower court went through both the books minutely and found, page after page, word after word, slavishly copied, including the errors, and found the sequence, the meanings, the arrangement and everything else practically the same, except for some deliberate differences introduced here and there to cover up the piracy. The High Court referred to Copinger and James on Law of Copyright wherein the law has been neatly summarized that : In the case of compilations such as dictionaries, gazetteers, grammars, maps, arithmetics, almanacs, encyclopaedias and guide books, new publications dealing with similar subject-matter must of necessity resemble existing publications, and the defence of common source is frequently made where the new publication is alleged to constitute an infringement of an earlier one. The Court held that in law books and in books as mentioned above there is very little amount of originality but the same is protected by law and no man is entitled to steal or appropriate for himself the result of anothers brain, skill or labour even in such works. The Court further clarified that where there is a common source, the person relying on it must prove that he actually went to the common source from where he borrowed, employing his own skill, labour and brains and that he did not merely copy.

38. It is the admitted position that the reports in the Supreme Court Cases (SCC) of the judgments of the Supreme Court is a derivative work in public domain. By virtue of Section 52(1) of the Act, it is expressly provided that certain acts enumerated therein shall not constitute an infringement of copyright. Sub-clause (iv) of clause (q) of Section 52(1) excludes the reproduction or publication of any judgment or order of a Court, Tribunal or other judicial authority, unless the reproduction or publication of such judgment or order is prohibited by the Court, the Tribunal or other judicial authority from copyright. The judicial pronouncements of the Apex Court would be in the public domain and its reproduction or publication would not infringe the copyright. That being the position, the copy-edited judgments would not satisfy the copyright merely by establishing amount of skill, labour and capital put in the inputs of the copy-edited judgments and the original or innovative thoughts for the creativity are completely excluded. Accordingly, original or innovative thoughts are necessary to establish copyright in the authors work. The principle where there is common source the person relying on it must prove that he actually went to the common source from where he borrowed the material, employing his own skill, labour and brain and he did not copy, would not apply to the judgments of the courts because there is no copyright in the judgments of the court, unless so made by the court itself. To secure a copyright for the judgments delivered by the court, it is necessary that the labour, skill and capital invested should be sufficient to communicate or impart to the judgment printed in SCC some quality or character which the original judgment does not possess and which differentiates the original judgment from the printed one. The Copyright Act is not concerned with the original idea but with the expression of thought. Copyright has nothing to do with originality or literary merit. Copyrighted material is that what is created by the author by his own skill, labour and investment of capital, maybe it is a derivative work which gives a flavour of creativity. The copyright work which comes into being should be original in the sense that by virtue of selection, co-ordination or arrangement of pre-existing data contained in the work, a work somewhat different in character is produced by the author. On the face of the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, we think that the principle laid down by the Canadian Court would be applicable in copyright of the judgments of the Apex Court. We make it clear that the decision of ours would be confined to the judgments of the courts which are in the public domain as by virtue of Section 52 of the Act there is no copyright in the original text of the judgments. To claim copyright in a compilation, the author must produce the material with exercise of his skill and judgment which may not be creativity in the sense that it is novel or non- obvious, but at the same time it is not a product of merely labour and capital. The derivative work produced by the author must have some distinguishable features and flavour to raw text of the judgments delivered by the court. The trivial variation or inputs put in the judgment would not satisfy the test of copyright of an author.