- Court
- Delhi High Court
- Date of judgment
- Judge
- Anish Dayal
- Outcome
- Rectification allowed
Headnote
Rectification petition under section 50 of the Copyright Act dismissed. A petitioner who clears the person aggrieved threshold must still prove that the entry was wrongly made. The petitioner sought to do so by relying on a Lebanese third party's trade mark registrations in Australia and elsewhere to show that the respondent's artistic work was not original, but that third party was never made a party. Foreign trade mark registrations are not incontrovertible evidence of authorship of an artistic work, and rectifying the register on them would rest on extraneous and unverified evidence. The Berne Convention does not assist, since it is for the alleged author to assert its own rights. Section 48 makes the register only prima facie evidence, leaving any true author free to claim. The petitioner was also approbating and reprobating, having itself claimed in its own opposition to be the originator of the same artistic work.
Headnote by BRB Legal, written from the judgment: a summary for reference, not legal advice. Read the judgment itself before relying on it.