Copyright Registration in India

Copyright protects original expression: the words of a book, the code of a program, the notes of a composition, the lines of a drawing, the images and sound of a film. It does not protect the underlying idea, method or facts. Protection arises automatically when an original work is created and fixed; registration is optional under Section 45.

Registration is still worth having for works that matter commercially. The entry in the Register of Copyrights is prima facie evidence of the particulars recorded, including authorship and ownership (Section 48). That shifts the burden in a dispute, supports complaints to online platforms, and makes licensing, assignment and investor due diligence simpler. It also fixes a date: evidence that the work existed in your hands by the date of filing.

There is one Copyright Office, in New Delhi, and applications are filed online from anywhere; our page on copyright registration in Mumbai covers the film, music and software work registered from that city.

India is a member of the Berne Convention, so works of Indian authors are protected in other member countries without registration there, and foreign works are protected in India on the same footing.

The owner has the exclusive right to do, or to authorise others to do, the acts listed in Section 14 for that kind of work. For a literary, dramatic or musical work these include reproducing it, issuing copies to the public, performing it in public, communicating it to the public, making a film or sound recording of it, and translating or adapting it. For artistic works, films and sound recordings the list is tailored to the medium.

Doing any of those acts without a licence infringes copyright (Section 51). The owner can sue for an injunction, damages and accounts of profits (Section 55), and knowing infringement is also a criminal offence (Section 63). Courts act faster on clear evidence of ownership and date, which is where the registration entry helps.

Copyright is also an asset. It can be assigned or licensed, wholly or partly, for a period and a territory, by a written document (Sections 18 and 19). A licence is often the better tool when you want to keep ownership and earn from the work, for example by licensing software to customers or a song to a film producer.

Some uses are permitted without permission, such as fair dealing for private use, research, criticism, review and reporting current events (Section 52). The line between fair dealing and infringement depends on the facts, so take advice before relying on it commercially.

Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, methods, systems or facts, only the way they are expressed. It does not protect names, titles or short slogans, which are the territory of trademarks. And it gives limited protection to designs applied to industrial products: copyright in a design that could have been registered under the Designs Act, 2000 ends once the owner or a licensee has reproduced it industrially on more than 50 articles (Section 15(2)).

For a brand name or logo used in trade, register a trademark. For the look of a product, consider design registration. For a technical invention, a patent.