Legal Principle - A Plaint can be rejected where the documents which are placed on record does not support the case of the Plaintiff:
The appellants admitted the fact in the plaint, more specifically in para 15 of the plaint that they have sale loaders/ receivers and are manufacturing approx 1,200 loaders/receivers per year and sale the said articles and in support of same, also produced its invoices. In view of the above facts and admission, it is admitted by the appellants that they have sold the actual article i.e. loader and receiver.
Thus, it is clear that Section 15 (2) of the Copyright Act, 1957 plays a vital role in the present case. As per Section 15 (2) of the Copyright Act, 1957 the Copyright shall cease as soon as any article to which design has been applied, has been reproduced more than fifty times. In the present matter, indisputably after applying the design, the loader/receiver has been manufactured approx 1200 times per year.
Therefore, it is clear that the entitlement of a copyright owner in an artistic work/drawing/design is lost once an article is produced more than 50 times using the drawing/design as means of an industrial process. Once the copyright is lost under Section 15 of the Copyright Act, Section 14 (c) of the Act cannot be read so as to re confer a copyright in an artistic work although the same is lost by virtue of Section 15 of the said Act.
Furthermore, once the appellants, having admitted that they are manufacturing approx 1,200 loaders/receivers per year, within the meaning of Section 15 (2), they are no longer entitled to enjoy the rights over the same. Therefore, the present suit is clearly barred by the law. (Gujrat High Court - 2016)