No Copyright for 'Common Sense'

Bharat Matrimony Com. P. Ltd., a pioneer in providing matrimonial services, created a system; "Assured Contact Phone Verification Service", and was the owner and proprietor of the copyright in the system, inbuilt in their website. They spent several lakhs developing and implementing the unique feature which has became synonymous with their website bharatmatrimony.com.

People Interactive (I) Pvt. Ltd., proprietors of the website. "My Contact Details", is a direct competitor of Bharat Matrimony, offering identical features to customers. Bharat Matrimony alleged People Interactive to have lavishly copied the features of the applicant, which was conceptualized by them, and the implementation of the same by People Interactive mislead the public. In this pursuance, Bharat Matrimony filed a suit for temporary injunction. The counsel for Bharat Matrimony in the course of proceedings submitted that the People Interactive had hijacked the core concept of the system development using the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) with minute cosmetic changes to the "Assured Contact Phone Verification Service". They asserted that this action had resulted in huge losses being accrued to the business of Bharat Matrimony, and hence it amounted to copyright infringement.

In response. the counsel for People Interactive contended that the "Assured Contact Phone Verification Service" provided by Bharat Matrimony did s not fall within the ambit of subject matter protected under the Copyright Act. They stated that copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, invention or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, illustrated or embodied.

The Court in response to the averments of the parties stated that Bharat Matrimony's claim made under Section 17 (a) failed, I since they were unable to identify the employee who purportedly created the "Assured Contact Phone Verification Service". The Court also noted that they had not produced any affidavit filed by the employee, claiming the invention as evidence. The Court noted that the IVR system was commonly being employed by corporates, banks, railways are broadly using the IVR system. The Court opined that there was nothing innovative regarding collection of personal information of prospective members of a website, but was in fact a matter of "common sense", being a standard practice of all website and online service providers. On these grounds, the Court pronounced the absence of any incidence of copyright infringement and accordingly pronounced the suit for temporary relief not maintainable.