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7. The learned Senior Counsel also submits that there was no allegation against the petitioners that they deceived the second respondent fraudulently and dishonestly to deliver the property or to retain the property and therefore the offence of cheating under Section 420 of IPC does not arise: As Section 120B of IPC is relatable only to the offences under Sections 490 and 420 of IPC, the charge under Section 120B of IPC is misconceived. Insofar as the offence under Section 65 of IT Act is concerned, the submission of the learned Senior Counsel is as follows : A telephone handset is not a computer nor a computer system containing a computer programme. Alternatively, in the absence of any law which is in force requiring the maintenance of "computer source code", the allegation that the petitioners concealed, destroyed or altered any computer source code, is devoid of any substance and therefore the offence of hacking is absent. In the absence of any allegation by the second respondent that they have a copyright to the source code of the computer programme in the handsets supplied by second respondent, the infringement of copyright does not arise. He lastly submits that the allegation that TTSL has a subscriber base of 100 thousand (one lakh) customers in Andhra Pradesh and therefore there was no necessity for TTSL to woo the customers/subscribers of second respondent.

14. Computer source code or source code, or just source or code may be defined as a series of statements written in some human readable computer programming language constituting several text files but the source code may be printed in a book or recorded on a tape without a file system, and this source code is a piece of computer software. The same is used to produce object code. But a programme to be run by interpreter is not carried out on object code but on source code and then converted again. [Diane Rowland and Elizabeth Macdonald : Information Technology Law; Canandish Publishing Limited; (1997). p. 17] Thus, source code is always closely guarded by the computer companies, which develop different function specific computer programmes capable of handling various types of functions depending on the need. The law as we presently see is developing in the direction of recognizing a copyright in the source code developed by a programmer. If source code is copied, it would certainly violate copyright of developer. With this brief background in relation to computer source code, we may now consider in brief the technological aspects of a cell phone and how it works. This is necessary to understand the controversy involved in this case.

(c) and (d) omitted.

28. Therefore, reading Section 2(o), (ffc) and Sections 13 and 14 together, it becomes clear that a computer programme is by very definition original literary work and, therefore, the law protects such copyright. Under Section 63 of the Copyright Act, any infringement of the copyright in a computer programme/source code is punishable. Therefore, prima facie, if a person alters computer programme of another person or another computer company, the same would be infringement of the copyright. Again the entire issue in this regard is subject to the evidence that may be led by the complainant at the time of trial. This Court, however, examined the submission of the learned senior counsel for the petitioners in the background of the provisions of the Copyright Act and observations made herein are not intended to decide the question one way or the other. The trial Court has to deal with these aspects.