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8. There is a great deal of similarity in both the books. The defendant attributes the similarity to common sources from which both the books have been compiled and common ideas dealt with in them. It has been urged on behalf of the defendants that there can be no copyright in ideas, and the defendants are right in this. The laws of copyright do not protect ideas, but they deal with the particular expression of the ideas. The protection of ideas falls not within the laws as to copyright, but within the patent laws. Unlike the owner of a copyright, a patentee has the sole right to use his invention within certain limits, and if anybody uses that patent, although he has made independent investigations, he infringes the patent. But in the case of copyright that is not so. It is always possible to arrive at the same result from independent sources, and the fact that the defendant produces something like the plaintiff's earlier work does not necessarily create an infringement : it must be shown that the defendant has derived his work from the plaintiffs'. As Lord Atkinson pointed out in Macmillan & Co. Ltd. v. Cooper (1924) W.N. 16, the moral basis upon which the protective provisions of the Copyright Act of 1911 rests is the Eighth Commandment : "Thou shalt not steal."

12. The whole of this matter about whose similarity there is no dispute forms a substantial part of the book. When it is established that the defendant copied this matter from the plaintiffs' book, it would not be unsafe to presume that the other matter in defendant's book which bears similarity to the matter in the plaintiffs' book was also taken from the plaintiffs' book. 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 availed himself of the labour of the plaintiffs and adopted their arrangement and subject-matter. Such a use by the defendant of the plaintiffs' book cannot be regarded as legitimate. In Jarrold v. Houlston (1857) 3 K & J 708 the publishers of Dr. Brewer's "Guide to Science" obtained an injunction against the publication of the "Reason Why". The works in controversy were written on the same plan, and presented in the form of question and answer, popular information on a variety of scientific subjects. The earlier book, Dr. Brewer's "Guide to " Science" had evidently been used to a considerable extent in the preparation of the later one although copying was denied. The Judge said:

I take the illegitimate use, as opposed to the legitimate use of another man's works on subject' matters of this description to be this : if knowing that a person whose work is protected by copyright has with considerable labour, compiled from various sources a work in itself not original, but which he has digested and arranged, you being minded to compile a work of like description, instead of taking the pains of searching into all the common sources and obtaining your subject, matter from them avail yourself of the labour of your predecessor, adopt his arrangements, adopt, moreover, the very questions he has asked, or adopt them with but a slight degree of colourable variation, and thus save yourself pains and labour by availing yourself of the pains and labour which he has employed, that I take to be an illegitimate use.