Introduction
The human mind is extremely creative. Therefore, there exist Intellectual Property Rights, which protect anything that stems from the human mind, based on an original thought process, or an individual expression made through a specific set of acquired skills. Legally, such productions of the mind can be provided with protection, which helps in limiting the ownership of such ideas to the creator. This protection is provided by Copyright Law. It enables the creator of an art, drama, or literary device to protect their brainchild, as well as gives them rights to any publication, duplication or expression of the same.
This law, in India, is governed by the Copyright Act, 1957. It provides protection, not to ideas themselves, but to the original expression of the same, through literary, artistic or dramatic works, which are not just limited to the traditional modes of production, distribution and /or duplication.
While, from above, it is clear as to what qualifies to be protected under Copyright Law, there still exists some dichotomy, both in the physical and virtual platforms, when it comes to publication and circulation of legislations, acts, judicial orders/pronouncements, and other publications of the sort.
Indian Statutory Provisions
As for accessibility of law in India, under the Copyright Act, 1957, Section 2(k) underlines the definition of a Government Work as any work made available to people through publication by direction of any judicial authority in the country. The ownership of such 'Government Works', as per Section 17(d), lies with the Government itself, unless stated otherwise. Further, Section 52(1)q of the Act deals with Indian fair dealing, which includes publication or reproduction of Acts, matters published by Official Gazettes, Committee reports, court judgments or orders, etc., excludes duplication all of this from copyright infringement. Therefore, as it may be understood from the above, all publications made by the Government, i.e. Government Works, are owned by the Government, but are freely available to be reproduced or published by anyone, as a right, without being liable for copyright infringement.
Legal Issue in This Regard
We know that most Government Work, when republished, have some additions done, licensed or not, such as interpretations, comments added by publishers, or changes made in the font, colours, formatting, citation mode, headnotes, summaries etc. The legal issue that thus arises here, is that, do all such additions done by publishers qualify to be covered and protected under copyright, or do they belong in the ambit of open access, in line with the original Government Works, exempted from any copyright infringement?
Legal Interpretation
In the 2002 case of Eastern Book Co. v. D.B. Modak and Navin Desai, a sub-issue of copyright in reporting a judgment of a court came up, in addition to the above-mentioned issue. Given that it was a fairly neglected topic at the time, the Division Bench explained that, it requires tremendous understanding and extensive knowledge, in addition to an amicably applied skill set, based on thorough research and careful consideration of the matter available, and a rational perception, to be able to publish any additional information along with a Government Work. Thus, the Supreme Court held that such work is liable to be protected by copyright. The Court further added that such copyright is not available on the grounds of publishing the material before anyone else, as the original material is already available to public at large. Also, no trivial additions to original works will amount to qualification for copyright protection.
In another case, Union of India v. Vansh Sharad Gupta, the High Court of Delhi, while hearing a writ petition filed by the Government against an order passed by the Central Information Commission, which had directed it to upload all amended bare Acts online so that the public knows its laws and private publishers do not gain a monopoly by publishing the same as copyrighted works, held that as per the RTI Act, Govt. was mandated to publish all such works in the legal domain.
In addition to such decisions, the Government is seen to be proactive by moving towards progression into ensuring free access to legal material to public. One such step is the uploading all updated laws on India Code, which is the digital repository of all Central and State Acts within India.
Conclusion
Although there are various statutory and precedential reliefs available in the ambit of copyright in the accessibility of law, there still exist certain grey areas, with regard to the scope of the same in the digital world. We are constantly moving towards a more and more digital era, in which its extremely easy to reproduce and duplicate any work, and not just restricted to Government Works. This makes the area of copyright fragile and loose, leaving space for a more effective legislation. However, when it comes to accessibility of law by the Government, the argument that copyright provisions are made available as a means of benefitting the society at large rather than the personal benefit of the author, takes precedence, and facilitates the Government to serve its people.
