BLACKWOOD AND SONS Vs. A N PARASURAMAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE relief sought in both these suits is the same, namely, injunction arising out of an alleged infringement of copyright with other ancillary reliefs such as damages, accounts etc. The two suits have been tried together because of certain questions of law which arise in them but as the farts are necessarily different they have to be set out separately.

(2.) C. S. No. 54 of 1955 : The plaintiffs are Messrs. Macmillan and Co. Ltd. while the defendants are a firm of publishers carrying on business in Madras under the name and style of "the Little Flower and Co. " Madras. The plaintiffs claimed that they were entitled to the copyright by assign-ment in respect of two works (1) The return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, and (2) A collection of stories by rabindranath Tagorc published under the style of "stories from Tagore". The return of the Native was prescribed by the University of Madras for the B. A. degree examination 1956, Part I English. The defendants published in 1954 in Madras without the consent of the plaintiffs a "guide to the Study of Hardy's Return of the Native. " The other work "stories from tagore" published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co. was prescribed as a text book for the Intermediate Examination of the University of Madras also of 1956 for Part I english. In regard to this work also the defendants published a guide in 1954. The complaint of the plaintiff was that these two "guides" reproduced substantial parts of the two original works and that though called "guide" they were in reality copies of the original works which competed with their, sales of these latter and therefore prejudicially affected the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs required the defendants, by formal notice to cease to publish these guides, and to render them an account of their sales on the ground that these constituted an infringement of the copyright vested in them but when the infringement was denied and the claim of the plaintiffs repudiated the present suit has been filed for enforcing the rights of the plaintiffs. The reliefs claimed in the suit included the grant of an injunction restraining the defendants from printing, publishing or selling the books complained of or other editions thereof and directing the defendants to pay damages and render an account of the profits arising out of the defendants' publications and also the delivery to the plaintiffs of copies of the guides which were now in the defendants possession.

(3.) THE defendants raised the following pleas: