ABRIDGEMENT AND ABSTRACT

Copyright subsists in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression from which they can be perceived, reproduced or otherwise communicated to the public. Copyright confers exclusive right on the copyright owner to reproduce the work (both primary and secondary work) in a tangible form. If a person other than the owner uses the copyrighted work without license/permission from the owner, it constitutes infringement of copyright. Therefore, a news aggregator cannot copy an entire news article/story and reproduce it on his/her platform without seeking license/permission from the owner of such article.

It is settled law that no copyright subsists in facts, titles and short phrases. As mentioned above, a news aggregator essentially collates news from other sources and presents it in a succinct manner. Does condensing a work mean making the original work shorter by retaining portions selectively and omitting the rest? It is relevant to discuss here the decision of the Privy Council in Macmillan v. Copper on abridgement. The Privy Council observed as follows “An abridgement of an author’s work means a statement designed to be complete and accurate of the thoughts, opinions and ideas by him expressed therein but set forth much more concisely in the compressed language of the abridger.” Therefore, copying of certain passages and omitting others would not constitute abridgement. An equitable abridgment of a literary work is entitled to copyright protection if it is new and original and the author has bestowed sufficient skill and labor in creating it. However, an abridgement falls under the definition of an adaptation as provided in Section 2(a) (iii) of the Copyright Act, 1957. It derives content from an existing work and retains the essence of such work. Thus, making an abridgement of a literary work by a news aggregator would require permission/license from the owner of the original work.

The content of the news aggregator must rather be in the form of an abstractAn abstract is a shortened depiction of a work, usually much shorter than an abridgement. An abstract conveys the fundamental idea of a work instead of its form or expression. It develops content based on raw data such as facts. It is relevant to note that an abstract generally promotes the original source of work and does not supersede it. Thus, an abstract usually does not infringe copyright vested in the original work. However, an abstract that substantially reproduces the original work without seeking permission/license from the owner of such work would amount to infringement of copyright.

An example of permissible abstract is the opera publisher Ricordi’s attempt to enforce copyright in the United States. In 1911 Ricordi filed a suit against the US publisher of a book called Opera Stories, claiming that a halfpage 300-word synopsis of a three-act 46-page opera infringed the opera’s copyright. The US courts did not grant an injunction and observed as follows: “colorable shortening of the original text, where immaterial incidents are omitted and voluminous dissertations are cut down, but where the characters, the plot, the language and the ideas of the author are pirated. Instead, the book: does not use the author’s language, it does not appropriate his ideas and it does not reproduce his characters … It gives just enough information to put the reader upon inquiry, precisely as the syllabus of a law report, the review of a book or the description of a painting induces the reader to examine further.” Thus, the content of a news aggregator must ideally act as a referral to the original work and divert traffic to the source.

Further, the content of the news aggregator must be original and not merely a summarized copy of the original work. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak held that creative works by definition are original and are protected by copyright, however, only minimal level of creativity is required to render a work original viz. the original work should be the product of an exercise of skill and judgment.