The Hon’ble Kerala High Court delivered a significant judgement with respect to criminal prosecution in copyright infringement In re O.P. Ashraf vs. State of Kerala, wherein the Hon’ble court was hearing a revision application against conviction order passed by sessions court O.P. Ashraf for selling the fake audio cassettes on roadside with any approval or authorization.
Short facts:
On 10th October 2001, Ashraf was found engaged in sale of fake audio cassettes on the footpath near the roadside of Kannur. Thus, Ashraf was arrested for selling fake audio cassettes on footpath, and the cassettes were seized by the police. The case was filed claiming the unauthorised copies of the copyright audio recordings were found without any necessary license or permission from the original copyright holder under Section 51(a), 52A and 63[1] of the Act.
On 30th December 2004, the Judicial Magistrate First Class-I at Kannur considered the evidence produced by the prosecution and convicted Ashraf. Furthermore, Sessions Court at Thalassery upheld this conviction on 24th January 2012.
Hon’ble court held:
The Hon’ble court while reversing the judgments passed by trial courts held that the prosecution failed to find any concrete evidence to prove its case. The court emphasised that under Section 51(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957 prosecution must establish that the cassettes contained recordings covered under copyright without valid license. Furthermore, the court did not find any comparison between the original work and infringed work (i.e., seized cassettes).
Furthermore, the court found that the identity of the copyright holder was also unknown and there was no evidence produced to reveal or prove the identity of the copyright holder and there was no evidence that the copyright holder had granted permission for reproduction of the recordings. Therefore, violation of Section 52A of the Copyright Act was not established by prosecution since it was not proven that the cassettes lacked the required copyright information. Thus, in absence of such evidence conviction could not be sustained and was accordingly set aside.
Hence, the burden of proof lies on the prosecution to provide clear evidence for the infringement. The acquittal of O.P. Ashraf reaffirms the principle that convictions for copyright infringement must be based on comprehensive evidence.