Dharampal at his copying shop in North Campus, DU. Express photo by Oinam Anand. 15 December 2016
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis have decided to withdraw their lawsuit on Thursday against the Delhi University-based photocopy shop Rameshwari Photocopy. In a joint statement, the publishers have said they will not appeal further in the Supreme Court, following the Delhi High Court Division Bench appeal decision of December 9, 2016.
“We have taken a considered decision not to pursue the Delhi University photocopy shop case further in the courts and will today be filing an application with the Delhi High Court to withdraw as plaintiffs,” said the publishers in a press release.
“We continue to stand by our principles stated throughout this case. We support and seek to enable equitable access to knowledge for students and we understand and endorse the important role that course packs play in the education of students. We support our authors in helping them produce materials of the highest standard and we maintain that copyright law plays an important part in balancing the interests of those creating, curating, and disseminating learning materials with those requiring access to them,” said the statement.
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The publishing houses had last year filed a case against the Rameshwari Photocopy Service to stop the sale of compilations of parts of books in the form of course packs to students was illegal and in violation of the provisions of the 1957 Copyright Act.
The single judge had earlier passed an interim order restraining the shop from selling copies of compiled course books to students in October 2012. Although the case was specifically against Rameshwari Photocopy Service, other photocopy shops in the vicinity also stopped the sale of such course packs due to fear of being dragged to court.
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