Delhi HC Summons 3 Authors To Appear In Copyright Infringement Case Related To A School Book On Artifical Intelligence
The Delhi High Court has directed the presence of the three accused authors accused of copyright infringement by a teacher, to remain present in the Court on October 18, 2023. The lawsuit sought a permanent injunction against copyright infringement of the Plaintiff's original literary works. The Plaintiff is an expert in AI education. He authored a work named "Essentials of Artificial Intelligence" for classes VIII to XII based on CBSE curriculum.
A Bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh directed that if the Plaintiff's book is found being sold on e-commerce platforms, the Plaintiff can approach those platforms to remove the infringing content within 72 hours, in accordance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 by providing a copy of the May 25, 2023 order along with the notice to e-commerce platforms.
“Upon receiving such a notice from the Plaintiff, all e-commerce platforms who are intermediaries, shall comply, and take down the Plaintiff’s book titled “Essentials of Artificial Intelligence” within 72 hours in compliance of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.”
In February 2023, Plaintiff found that Defendant No. 1 had published books titled "Essentials of Information Technology" for Classes IX and X, allegedly reproducing parts of Plaintiff's work without permission. Defendants No. 7, 8, and 9, authors of the infringing books, were named. Plaintiff had stated that 77 pages were verbatim copied.
Advocate Chandra Prakash appeared for the Plaintiff and Advocate Mohit Chaudhary appeared for the Defendants.
An order dated July 03, 2023 instructed both parties to provide their respective books to the Local Commissioner as per a previous order from May 25, 2023. The Commissioner's report was to be filed along with the Defendants' application.
The Court examined the provided books and found that the "Communication Skills" chapter in Defendant No. 7's book and Plaintiff's book were almost identical.
An application under Order XXXI Rule 4 CPC will be considered after the appearance of the accused authors, the Court noted. The case is scheduled for the next hearing on October 18, 2023.
Cause Title: Kartik Sharma v. Sultan Chand & Sons Pvt. Ltd. & Ors.
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