Copyright Law in India – Special Reference to Software Piracy

Abstract

Copyright is a form of intellectual property protection granted under Indian law to the creators of original works of authorship such as literary works (including computer programs, tables and compilations ,computer databases which may be expressed in words, codes, schemes or in any other form, a machine readable medium), dramatic, musical and artistic works, cinematographic films and sound recordings. The copyright infringement of software or software piracy refers to practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer software. Pirated software hurts everyone- from software developers to retail store owners, and ultimately to all software users. Furthermore, the illegal duplication and distribution of software has a significant impact on the economy. The paper explains about the effects of the legislative provisions with respect to Indian Copyright Act (ICA) and its compliance of international treaties and conventions concerning copyright law. This paper briefly reviews the protection afforded under the statute and the problems relating to it. The domain of software piracy were considered in this paper to identify the legal effects of the provisions and the role of the courts with respect to enforcement which protects the rights of the copyright owners and an initial approach to propose a reformation to be done safeguarding the interests of the copyright holders absolutely.