Central Book Company is a registered partnership firm carrying on the business of publishing law books. The said company is involved in the printing and publishing of various books relating to the field of law. One of th

Originality is the basic yardstick used by the copyright regimes in the world to evaluate the availability copyright protection to a particular work. Section 13(1) of the Indian Copyright Act 1957 states that copyright subsists in "original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works." However, the Act fails to give any definition or test to determine originality of a work. This leaves the court with the duty to decide the amount originality required for a work to claim copyright protection. India strongly followed the doctrine of 'sweat of the brow' for a considerably long time. In Eastern Book Company 1. D.B. Modak, JAIR 2008 Supreme Court 809,810] the Supreme Court discarded the 'Sweat of the Brow' doctrine and shifted to a 'Modicum of creativity' approach as followed in the US. The dispute is relating to copyrightability of judgements. The notion of "flavour of minimum requirement of creativity" was introduced in this case. The Court granted copyright protection to the additions and contributions made by the editors of SCC. At the same the Court also held that the orders and judgments of the Courts are in public domain and everybody has a right to use and publish them and therefore no copyright can be claimed on the same. The Court further referred the principle of a minimal degree of creativity, i.e., there should be a minimum degree of creativity in derivative work to show that the copy-edited version of the Judgement is not an original work. It can be concluded from this case that the jurisdiction of Copyright protection under the Copyright Act, 1957, finds itself in fair play. At the point when an individual produces something with his ability and work, it provides possession to him, for his/her production and the other individual would not be allowed to make a benefit out of the expertise and work of the primary creator, who had initially produced. It is for this reason that the Copyright Act of 1957, gives the authors absolute privilege of the floor in terms of exclusive rights for their originally produced work, also considered as non-tangible prerogatives in various legislation. This Act puts a check on the exploitation of the original owner against the use of his work without his consent. Lastly, the Court did not allow the Respondents to sell their CD ROMS with the text of judgements of the Supreme Court Cases along with their own headnotes, footnotes, and other inputs. The Judgement of the High Court was modified to the extent that in addition to the interim relief, the above-mentioned additional relief to the appellants was also granted by the Apex Court. The concept of "originality" has undergone a paradigm shift from the "sweat of the brow" doctrine to the "modicum of creativity" standard put forth in Feist Publication Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service by the United States Supreme Court. The doctrine of "sweat of the brow" provides copyright protection on basis of the labour, skill and investment of capital put in by the creator instead of the originality. In Feist's case, the US Supreme Court totally negated this doctrine and held that in order to be original a work must not only have been the product of independent creation, but it must also exhibit a "modicum of creativity". The Supreme Court prompted 'creative originality' and laid down the new test to protect the creation on basis of the minimal creativity. This doctrine stipulates that originality subsists in a work where a sufficient amount of intellectual creativity and judgment has gone into the creation of that work. The standard of creativity need not be high but a minimum level of creativity should be there for copyright protection.