AGARWALA PUBLISHING HOUSE Vs. BOARD OF HIGH SCHOOL AND INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS writ petition filed by a firm of publishers challenges an amendment of the Regulations of the Board of High School and Intermediate Examination, U. P., introduced by a Gazette notification dated 9- 6-1959 issued under Section 15 of the Intermediate Education Act, declaring that copyright of the question papers set at examinations conducted by the Board shall vest in the Board and forbidding the publication of such question papers without the Board's permission, which will be granted only if the publisher pays a fee of Rs. 5 for each paper and undertakes not to include in his publication any solutions of the questions.

(2.) MR . S. C. Khare, who appears for the petitioner, has made the following submissions:

(3.) A subsidiary argument advanced in this connection is that the notification is bad because it attempts to legislate on the subject of copyright, which is a Central subject (item 49 of the Union List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution). But the determination of this question depends on whether the notification purports to introduce any change in the existing law of copyright, as embodied in the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, or whether it merely acts within the framework of the existing law. If under the law as it stands the Board is not the owner of the copyright in question papers set for its examinations--a point which will have to be considered in detail when dealing with the third submission of Mr. Khare--it can certainly be argued that the impugned notification changes the law by declaring that copyright vests in the Board. But assuming for the time being that under the existing law the Board is the owner of the copyright in such papers, the notification cannot be held to introduce any change; it merely makes a declaration of the Board's legal right and then goes on to make provision for assignment of the copyright, in conformity with the provisions of Section 18 of the Copyright Act.