Contents

• Introduction
• India’s perspective on the software copyright
• Indian copyright software

Introduction

Software copyright can be told as the application of the copyright law and can turn it into machine-readable software. While the legal principles and the policies debate that concerns about the software copyright having close parallels in the other domains of copyright law. Several issues are arising with the software. This content especially concentrates on the topics that are particular to the software.

India’s perspective on the software copyright

In India, the Copyright Act, 1957 protects the original expressions. The computer software is protected copyright unless it leads to technical effects. The computer software having technical effects is patentable under the India Patent Act, 1970. According to the center for the interest and society or CIS, the number of software patents which was granted in India is approximately 200 from the year 1999 till month September 2010. Computer software which does not have a technical effect gets protection under the copyright law. For copyright protection, the computer software requires for being original and having sufficient efforts and skills must be put into its original form. But a program that is only able to generate multiplication tables or algorithms may not implement the degree of efforts that are required for getting the protection. Apart from being in its original form and not copied from anywhere, the work should be first published in India or case the work is published outside India the author on the exact date of publication or in case the work is published outside India the author on the date of its publication or in case the author is dead that person should be a citizen of India at then the time of his death.

For the unpublished work, the author on the exact date of making of work should be a citizen of India or gets domiciled in India. The Government accords the same protection to any foreign copyright author's work which is published in the other countries being a member of the Berne Convention or UCC because this protection is provided to an author who is a citizen of India. In India, the computer software does not form the matter of the patent as it is unable to fulfill the requirements for an invention provided under the Indian Patent Act to conform with the provisions of TRIPs, Berne Convention, WIPO Copyright Treaty, etc.

Indian copyright software

Why the Copyright Isn’t Automatic?

If you do not put the little © on your work, you get copyright protection from your work automatically and it becomes fixed with a tangible medium. This explains that you own the copyright, and also no one can copy or distribute or display or make adaptations of your work without taking your permission. The actual problem comes in case someone tries to infringe on your copyright. Then, the protection stays no longer automatic. It is up to you to file a proper lawsuit in the federal court and to convince the judge to give the order to the infringer to stop the infringement and compensate you for your losses and his infringement activity. Even though you own a copyright, the Supreme Court has ruled that you cannot file your lawsuit if you have not registered the copyright with the Copyright Office. Until you get the registration, there is nothing you can do to inhibit this kind of activity of infringement.

What are the Statutory Damages?

As soon as possible after the software is published if you have not registered your work within, it may not be worthwhile for you to put a lawsuit against an infringer who has infringed your work. Federal lawsuits may cost a big amount of money for lawyer fees and litigation costs. It means that to make a copyright infringement lawsuit you must be able to invest a lot of money lose from the other parties. But it is merely very hard to show exactly that how much monetary damage a copyright infringement has done. Though you can prove infringement, you may not be able to show it in the way of actual damages. Relying on the recovery of the actual damages creates a substantial risk that you may lose a lot of money for bringing the suit. In case you have registered the work before the infringement activity began within three months of the date the work was being published, you may be told to recover your work from the infringer.

Registration process: Cheap Insurance

All the benefits of prompt registration do not relate to the litigation. In fact, early registration can help to keep you out of court. It is because the infringer who is aware that you could recover the substantial statutory damages in the court may be more willing to negotiate and settle it down out of the court. If what you are publishing possibly has no value to anyone except you. But you may wish to just place a copyright notice on that specific material and not bother to register the copyright. In most situations, if your work is valuable enough to publish, it is also valuable enough to get registered.

Additional resources

• https://lenstax.com/l/copyright-at-a-glance
• https://lenstax.com/l/copyright-act-1957
• https://lenstax.com/l/registering-a-work-to-claim-copyright
• https://lenstax.com/l/protection-of-copyright
• https://lenstax.com/l/privacy-and-eligibilty-to-register-work-under-copyright
• https://lenstax.com/l/duration-and-limitation-of-the-rights-provided-by-copyright
• https://lenstax.com/l/indivisibility-and-divisibility-of-copyright
• https://lenstax.com/l/copyright-from-letter-fair-use
• https://lenstax.com/l/strategic-considerations-as-per-the-u-s-litigation
• https://lenstax.com/l/copyright-protection-for-the-games
• https://lenstax.com/l/website-security
• https://lenstax.com/l/registering-copyrights-for-computer-programs