It was held by the Court that a new arrangement of old matters will give a right to the protection afforded by the law of copyright. If anyone by pains and labour collects and reduces it as a systematic compilation in the form of a book it is original in the sense that that entitles the plaintiff to the copyright. The plaintiff worked for such a new arrangement of old matters as to be an original work and was entitled to the protection; and that as the defendants had not gone to independent sources of the material but had pirated the plaintiff’s work, they were restrained by injunction.
28. In Rai Toys Industries and Others v. Munir Printing Press, 1982 PTC 85, the plaintiff had published a Tambola ticket book containing 1500 different tickets in 1929. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants had brought out another ticket book which the plaintiffs claimed to have written in 1929 and registered as copyright. The ticket book brought out by the defendants was alleged to contain 600 different tickets and the same had been copied identically from the books of the plaintiff. On this basis, a suit for injunction and rendition of account was filed by the plaintiff. The question before the court was whether the ticket-books in the form of tables constitute literary work; and whether copyright has been violated or not? It was held by the High Court that preparation of tickets and placing them in tables required a good deal of skill and labour and would thus satisfy the test of being original literary work. It was recognized that the arrangement of numbers is individual work of a person who prepares it; it bears his individuality and long hours of labour. It is not information which could be picked up by all and sundry. The preparation of tickets is an individualized contribution and the compilation eminently satisfies the test of being an original literary work. Hence it was held to be a clear case of copyright violation when the defendant decided to pick and choose 600 tables on the sly and publish them as his individual work.
29. In Macmillan and Another v. Suresh Chandra Deb, ILR 17 Cal 952, the plaintiffs were proprietors of the copyright of a selection of songs and poems composed by various authors, which was published in 1861. In 1889, the defendants published a book containing same selection of poems and songs as was contained in plaintiff’s book, the arrangement, however, being different. The plaintiffs claimed copyright in the selection made by them. The defendants, on the other hand, contended that there could be no copyright in such selection. The Court held that in the case of works not original in the proper sense of the term, but composed of, or compiled or prepared from material which are open to all, the fact that one man has produced such a work does not take away from any one else the right to produce another work of the same kind, and in doing so to use all the materials open to him. But, as the law is concisely stated by Hall, V.C., in Hogg v Scott, L.R. 18 Eq. 444,, “the true principle in all these cases is, that the defendant is not at liberty to use or avail himself of the labour which the plaintiff has been at for the purpose of producing his work, that is, in fact, merely to take away the result of another mans labour, or, in other words, his property.” It is enough to say that this principle has been applied to maps, to road books, to guide books, to compilations on scientific and other subjects. This principle seems to be clearly applicable to the case of a selection of a poem. It was held that for such a