Legal heir is real owner of works
By
N Vinoth Kumar - CHENNAI
25th March 2013 10:43 AM
Legally speaking, Kannadhasan Pathippagam is on sound footing. It does have the right to prevent other publishers from bringing out in Tamil the translated works of Che Guevara, if one were to go by the Indian Copyright Act 1957, which protects one’s literary and artistic works under different provisions.
According to advocate Gladys Daniel, who successfully argued the case relating to publication of the articles that had appeared in Kudi Arasu in favour of the Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam in 2011, “under the Copyright Act 1957 an author’s work can be owned by their legal heirs for 60 years after his death. The work will come into the public domain only after 60 years of the author’s death.”
“Even if Che had not left any will regarding the copyright of his book, all the rights of his work will go to his heirs. To reproduce the works in any form, including translation, one must get permission and proper rights from those holding the copyright. Translation cannot be looked at as an independent work. With regard to use of photographs, all the rights must be with the person who commissioned the work,” she added.
However, if Kannadhasan Pathippagam failed to undertake the translation work within the time frame specified in the contract it signed with Ocean Press, then someone else can seek the licence to do so under Section 32 of Indian Copyright Act, Daniel said.
But lawyer Sundararajan had another take. “In today’s world, moving towards ‘free source’, whereby all intellectual properties are to be kept for everybody’s use, the copyright and patents laws look obsolete. The laws with a nearly 300 years history was first introduced to protect works of fine arts, so that no can reproduce them. But, after a while the basic concept of copyright itself has turned out to be a farce as one person cannot be the sole creator of something.”
Another lawyer, Vetriselvan, wondered whether Ocean Press really was the real owner of copyrights.
“Before checking out if Kannadhasan Pathippagam has obtained the translations rights, we have to check as to who gave Ocean Press the rights. For, Che had two wives and four children. It is important to check who is the legal heir,” he said.
http://newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/article1515815.ece
