In the case of Autodesk, Inc. & Another v. Prashant Deshmukh & Others ( 2011 (46) PTC 38 (Del.), the Delhi High Court, granted permanent injunction and punitive damages in favour of Autodesk, Inc. & Another(the Plaintiffs), thereby restraining Prashant Deshmukh & Others (the Defendants) from using the pirated/unlicensed software of the Plaintiff's company.
The Plaintiffs are registered companies in the U.S.A. Plaintiff No 1 is a design software and digital content company which provides design software to make, manage and market designs for hotels, motorways, office buildings and lifts, etc to professionals all over the world including India, and also has large resellers in India. Plaintiff No.2 owns softwares such as Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office and additionally produces a large range of computer peripherals. It has a subsidiary company in India with its office in New Delhi.
The Plaintiffs became aware of the large scale unlicensed/pirated use of its softwares by the defendants in May 2003 , through information passed on by one Mr. Devesh Tiwari, a software engineer for the computers of the defendants.
The Defendants chose not to contest the suit. In this light, the Court felt that there was no reason to disbelieve the deposition of Mr. Tiwari, according to which pirated softwares including the Microsoft Windows 95/98 Operating System; Microsoft Office 97/ 2000, AutoCAD Versions 12, 14 and 2000 were installed in the defendant's computers. He also found pirated CDs being used to install pirated softwares.
The Court further observed that a joint reading of the affidavits of Mr. Subroto Panda (Head of the IT departments of the legal Representatives of the Plaintiff Companies) and Ms. Rohini Boaz (an employee of Autodesk India Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary of Plaintiff No.1) revealed that any information regarding the purchase of license from the Plaintiff by the Defendants would have been available in the data base maintained by the Plaintiff companies. A search conducted by Ms. Boaz revealed that the defendants did not hold any such licenses and therefore the Plaintiffs could prove that the softwares found installed in the computers of the defendants were not licensed by the Plaintiff companies.
After considering the relevant statutory remedies available, the Court felt that Section 40 of the Copyright Act, which provides that the central Government may, by order published in the Official Gazette, direct that all or any provisions of the Act shall apply to work first published in any territory outside India to which the order relates in like manner as if they were first published in India, read with International Copyright Order, 1999, dated 24th March, 1999, and the provisions of Chapter XI of the Copyright Act including Section 51 which deals with infringement of copyright, would apply to the copyright registration obtained by the Plaintiffs in respect of the software found to be installed in the defendant's computers.
Section 51 of the Copyright Act, provides that copyright in a work shall be deemed to be infringed when any person who without license does anything the right to do which is conferred upon the owner of the copyright by the Act. Section 14, provides that copyright means the exclusive rights, subject to the provisions of the Act , to do or authorize the doing of specified acts in respect of a work or any substantial part thereof, which in the case of a computer programme would include the reproduction of the work in any material form including the storing of it in any medium by electronic means.
In light of the above, the Court held that by using the pirated versions of Plaintiff's software the defendants had infringed their copyright and accordingly awarded punitive damages in addition to permanent injunction.
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