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3. Plaintiffs have claimed copyright in the headnotes, in the selection, manner of arrangement and in the manner of presentation of the judgments in both printing and electronic form in the introductory line appended by them before each judgment which reads "The judgment of the Court was delivered by", in the paragraph numbering introduced by the editorial staff, in the copy-edited portions judgment of the Supreme Court and in the style and form of printing adopted by them for publication of the judgments of Supreme Court of India in the law reports. It is claimed that the head notes comprise of two portions namely, the `short note' consisting of catch words written in bold and the `long note' comprised of a brief discussion of the facts and the relevant extracts from the judgment of the Court. It is alleged that the editors go through the entire judgment and draft the head notes according to the various issues, propositions, statutes and provisions of the law involved which allegedly require considerable amount of skill, labour and expertise. The plaintiffs while are not claiming copyright in the text of the judgment have claimed copyright in the head notes and in the final version which is finalised by them incorporating the various editorial and coy-editing inputs made by the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs claim that even if the head notes were to be interpreted as abridgement of the text of the judgment, they were owners of the copyright in the head notes as it was well established that abridgements also constitute original literary works entitled to copyright protection. It is submitted that the introductory line "The following judgment of the Court was delivered by" bears the stamp of plaintiff No.3's editorial judgment, inasmuch as the plaintiffs have varied this introductory remark, introduced capital letters in respect of the word "judgment" and the "Court" and it is also amended if there are more than one judgments. Plaintiffs state that the judgments received from the Supreme Court invariably did not carry any paragraph numbers and on the rare occasion when they do contain paragraph numbers, the same may require change. The placing and introduction of paragraph numbers, according to the plaintiffs, requires a careful reading of the judgment and exercise of editorial judgment since in many cases the editor may feel that the passage typed as a paragraph need not be numbered as an independent paragraph and vice versa. Even in the style and form of printing copyright has been claimed. It is submitted that editors of the plaintiffs have evolved, after due deliberation study and discussion, a style of printing which has become a peculiarity associated with the SCC alone.

41. There being no copyright in the text of the judgments, can the plaintiff claim copyright in the head-notes? This is the only question which remains for consideration. A genuine abridgment of judgments of the Court is an original work and can be the subject-matter of infringement of a copyright even if the amount of originality is very small. However, in case the head-notes are verbatim extracts from the judgments of the Courts, there is no amount of skill or labour involved in preparing the head-notes and no person can claim a copyright therein. I have not gone through the head-notes of each and every judgment published in the journal of the plaintiffs nor I have gone through each and every head note of the judgments in the data base of the defendants and I am, therefore, not in a position at this stage to comment as to whether or not these head-notes are verbatim extracts from the judgments of the Court or whether any labour or skill of the plaintiffs is involved in preparing the head-notes. But, in case, the head-notes have been prepared by the plaintiffs with their own labour and skill and there is originality and creativity in the preparation of head-notes, there cannot be any dispute that the party which has produced the head-notes will have a copyright therein. Re-production of either a few sentences from the judgments of the Court or the entire paragraph or the joining together of some of the sentences of the judgment in the head-note, in my opinion, cannot be said to be either the creative or the original work or the abridgment of the judgment of the Court.

52. It is, therefore, clear that mere re-production of a part of the judgment in the head-note is not an abridgment of the judgment and no copyright can be claimed therein. Since the Supreme Court Cases runs into more than 170 volumes, contain more than 25000 judgments running into more than 1,25,000 pages, it is just not possible for this Court to look into each and every head-note to find out as to whether the head-notes in these judgments are re-production of passages selected from the judgments itself or these head-notes have been prepared by the plaintiffs with their own thoughts, ideas setting forth concisely in their own compressed language under the principles laid down in the judgment. It is also not possible for the Court, at this stage, to find out as to which head-note in the judgments published in S.C.C. have been copied by the defendants and whether the plaintiffs will have a copyright in those judgments, if not in the whole journal. In case, the head-notes qualify the standard laid down by me above, the plaintiffs will definitely have a copyright therein. But in case, they are only re-production of a few passages of the judgment detached from each other, no copyright can be claimed. The defendants have however, made a statement in Court that they will not re-produce the head-notes of the publications of the plaintiffs and with this statement, in my view, nothing survives in favor of the plaintiffs even in respect of the head-notes appearing in their journal.