CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has rejected a plea from the Periyar Self-Respect Propaganda Institution, represented by its secretary K Veeramani, to restrain the Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam (PDK), by its president TS Mani and general secretary K Ramakrishnan, from in any manner infringing the alleged copyrights of the Institution relating to `Kudiyarasu’ newspaper and other scripts, books and publications of EV Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar.
The Plaintiff (Veeramani) had failed to establish any ownership of the copyright in his favour and a corresponding infringement of copyright on the part of the respondents (Mani and Ramakrishnan),’’ Justice K Chandru observed on Monday.
The judge was dismissing an application arising out of a civil suit from the institution, claiming complete ownership of the writings of Periyar.
In the present case, it had been made clear that the author of `Kudiyarasu’, late Periyar was the owner and the articles published in the newspaper mostly related to the then existed economical, political, social and religious topics.
Therefore, unless the author had expressly reserved his right of reproduction, no copyright would vest with anyone as reproduction of such articles could not constitute an infringement of copyright as per Sec. 52(l)(m) of the Copyright Act, the judge said.
A reading of the memorandum of association of the plaintiff institution and the rules and regulations did not disclose any such vesting of ownership with it. In fact, Rules 22 and 23 only talked about future purchase of properties vesting with the institution.
The copyright in literary materials could only be an intellectual property and there had to be material to show that it was specifically assigned.