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Showing contexts for: reverse engineering in Salim Khan And Another vs Sumeet Prakash Mehra And Others on 2 September, 2013Matching Fragments
33. Mr. Dwarkadas submitted that Section 16 of the Act makes it clear that copyright subsists only in the works enumerated in the Act and no other. The Plaintiffs claim to be the author/owner of a literary work. In any suit for infringement of copyright in literary work, the literary work has to be in existence and produced before the Court in order to enable the Court to judge whether there has been any infringement of the copyrighted work. This is because it is trite law that copyright does not exists in ideas but only in the form in which the idea is reduced to writing and found to have been expressed. In other words, the fact that the Plaintiffs claim that they came up with an idea of an angry young police officer as the protagonist, would not by itself be sufficient to maintain an action for infringement. It is only when that idea is expressed in a particular form in writing and developed into an original story that copyright would subsist in the story as written and expressed in the literary work. In support of his contention Mr. Dwarkadas has relied on various decisions as set out in paragraph 3 of his written submissions. Mr. Dwarkadas has submitted that the failure of the Plaintiffs to produce the alleged copyright works cannot be cured by adopting the process of reverse engineering. He submitted that reverse engineering is a concept which applies in case of drawings, designs, etc. and does not apply in the case of copyright in a 'literary' work.