Being an unregistered right and yet serving the purpose of its creation, copyright seems to be one of the easiest and the less expensive rights to be obtained among the other forms of Intellectual Property Rights. Copyright is an exclusive legal right given to the author or creator of a work, be it dramatic, artistic or musical, to use and distribute his work for a limited period. The Bern Convention, specifically Article 5(2) states, “The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality” . Protection under copyright arises automatically without any formalities to be satisfied , but the problem arises when there is a claim of infringement, as the owners are bound to establish that they are entitled to copyright protection under the Act.
Further, Article 2(1) of the Berne Convention
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The Section clearly mentions as to which type of works are entitled to copyright under this section. But, do all works, be it written, spoken or sung, are entitled to copyright under the Act is one of the challenges faced by the courts in understanding the section. In Exxon v. Exxon Insurance the claim was made for an invented word ‘Exxon’ but the court held that “Exxon was not an original literary work within the meaning of Sec 2 of the Copyright Act, 1956” . The judge also referred to David LJ's observation in Hollinrake v. Truswell where he stated that “a literary work is intended to afford either information and instruction, or pleasure, in the form of literary enjoyment” and found that the sleeve chart did not satisfy this test . In the Exxon case, the court was not convinced that the word ‘Exxon’ was a proper subject matter of copyright. Further, in Francis, Day and Hunter v. 20th Century Fox the court held that “a title is not by itself a proper subject matter of copyright. As a rule a title does not involve literary composition, and is not sufficiently substantial to justify a claim to protection”