[2] The history of copyright law in India can be traced back to its colonial era under the British Empire.
[7][2] According to this Act, the period of copyright for photographs was 50 years from the time it was created (Act language is: "the term for which copyright shall subsist in photographs shall be fifty years from the making of the original negative from which the photograph was directly or indirectly derived, and the person who was owner of such negative at the time when such negative was made shall be deemed to be the author of the work, and, where such owner is a body corporate, the body corporate shall be deemed for the purposes of this Act to reside within the parts of His Majesty's dominions to which this Act extends if it has established a place of business within such parts.
")[8] For photographs published, before 21 January 1958 in India, the period of copyright is thus 50 years, as for them the old Act is applicable.
[2][failed verification] Copyright is a bundle of rights given by the law to the creators of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works and the producers of cinematograph films and sound recordings.
The Madras High Court rejected the argument of the Daily Calendar Supplying in their 1964 appeal, that their act falls under Section 52(t), since the original painting was still under the artist's private custody even if free copies were already being distributed to several temples in the south.
[19] In a recent judgement (Pine Labs Private Limited vs Gemalto Terminals India Limited), a division bench of the Delhi High Court confirmed this position and held that in cases wherein the duration of assignment is not specified, the duration shall be deemed to be five years and the copyright shall revert to the author after five years.
[21] While many people tend to use the term fair use to denote copyright exceptions in India, it is a factually wrong usage.
[22] India follows a hybrid approach that allows : While the fair use approach followed in the US can be applied for any kind of uses, the fair dealing approach followed in India is clearly limited towards the purposes of While the term fair dealing has not been defined anywhere in the Copyright Act 1957, the concept of 'fair dealing' has been discussed in different judgments, including the decision of the Supreme Court of India in Academy of General Education v. B. Malini Mallya (2009) and the decision of the High Court of Kerala in Civic Chandran v. Ammini Amma.
[29] In September 2016, the Delhi High Court ruled in Delhi University's Rameshwari Photocopy Service shop case, which sold photocopies of chapters from academic textbooks was not infringing on their publisher's copyright, arguing that the use of copyright to "stimulate activity and progress in the arts for the intellectual enrichment of the public" outweighed its use by the publishers to maintain commercial control of their property.
[31] The administrative remedies provided under the statute include detention of the infringing goods by the customs authorities.