The entrustment of collective management of rights in a copyrighted work to a copyright society is provided for in Copyright Act. These societies carry forward the rights of the owners by granting licence, collecting royalties and filing suits on behalf of the owners. In practice, no copyright owner administers his copyright alone. As it is beyond the ability of any individual owner to authorise every use of his work, or to enforce his rights effectively with every potential user worldwide, copyright societies administer their interests and negotiate their terms of remuneration with high volume users.

IPRS is a representative body of owners of music, i.e. composers, lyricists (or authors) and the publishers of music and is also the sole authorised body to issue licences for usage of musical works & literary music within India by any person. By virtue of the owners entrusting their performing rights to the society in their literary as well as musical works, including the works that may be produced in the future, the right to perform the work in public as well as communicate to the public rests with IPRS. It has been enforcing the copyrights licenced to it by issuing notices to establishments who have been making use of the musical works without authorization. Recently, the society dragged Hotel Goa Marriott Resort to court for non-payment of licence fees in respect of multi channel musical works played by it on its premises (IPRS Ltd. v. Hotel Goa Marriott Resort and Anr. ) The society alleged that it had licenced certain musical works to the hotel and was since then realizing fees from them. The hotel was allegedly in default of payment of fees for the years 2004 and 2005, however, they stated that they had procured licences for the same from individual broadcasters by then, in respect of these musical works and hence did not owe any fees to IPRS.

The Delhi High Court held that retransmission of a broadcast received from a broadcasting company by a hotel is a separate and distinct act and constitutes communication to the public for which the hotel is liable. Further, the broadcasting companies were required to obtain licence from a copyright owner, which, in the present case, was issued to the plaintiff. Hence, the playing of music by the defendant, without the authorization of plaintiff and without the payment of royalties was illegal and amounted to copyright infringement. The balance of convenience tilting in favour of the plaintiffs, the court confirmed the ex parte interim injunction against the defendant.

The defendant subsequently applied to the court to vacate the interim injunction and agreed to pay the licence fees arrears as claimed by the plaintiff society to the tune of Rs.5,16,730.50p, without accounting for interests and penalty amounts. The plaintiff accepted the same with an undertaking to repay the entire sum together with any interests, in case it doesn’t succeed in the final suit.

The scenario reflects strengthening of the copyright enforcement regime in India as also the fact that it is in the interests of copyright owners to join a collective administration organisation to ensure better protection to the copyright in their works and reap optimum economic benefits from their creations.