Is there any copyright issue by distributing donated books?

996 votes

No. Your act by no means qualifies to be a copyright infringement. Further as per the Indian law a writing or any material which carries copyright with itself can't sue or blame anyone of copyright infringement if his writing or material is being used for research, education or for charity. Keep doing your good job. You are clean this time. My best wishes for your genuine efforts to bring light of knowledge in the life of those who can't afford it.

Advocate Pulkit Prakash LawRato

642 votes

Yes there can be copyright issues as only copyright holder can licence any person to distribute books. Without express authorization ,it may amount to infringment. Before uploading book please do consult your lawyer. contact us for details.

Advocate Vinayak Srivastava LawRato

985 votes

under first sale doctrine It says that after that first sale, the buyer may sell or otherwise dispose of that book however he or she sees fit without violating the copyright law. The copyright law prevents you from copying a book, but not from reselling the copy you bought from the publisher. BUt here catch and you will liable copyright infringement if :

1. The book you are reselling is not authorise to sale in particular region, check the book they have restriction like to be sold in delhi & ncr only or Asia these countries etc
2. Your model is e commerce model which means you are putting the book cover of book you are selling, it any case you can do so, if you are selling these books-you have to come up with your own design cover. Because book cover is copyright seperately than literature /author copyright.

you can take defense as you are not selling but just dispatching it to one user to another user and takings service charges, so nature of business is quite different likely will not fall under copyright infringement, but to make sure you are not doing anything opposite to copyright law.Please send us your website address after careful consideration we can advise you better, please remember the law are very different in online/website and other mode.

Advocate Nischal Arvind Singh LawRato

576 votes

Dear Sir/Ma'am

Thank you for your query. No in this case it is unlikely that a Copyright issue will arise. This is because the concept of "First Sale Doctrine" is well recognised under Indian Copyright Law. Under this doctrine, when an object containing a copyright is first sold the rights of the copyright owner with respect to the underlying object stand extinguished. This in turn allows the article to be resold, rented or to be disposed of in any manner by the buyer. However, this does not mean that all rights like the right to reproduce get extinguished and these rights continue to remain with the copyright owner. Therefore, unless you are seeking to commercially benefit on a large scale using copyrights owned by others on a large scale there should be nothing to worry.

However, it may be a good idea for us to connect over phone or meet face to face in order to discuss this further. Please feel free to reach out to us on the number or email id mentioned in our profile. Happy to discuss any other issues that you may be facing.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks

Sanjeet

Advocate Sanjeet Kumar Thakur LawRato