Is self plagiarism an offence under Indian law

743 votes

Please be more specific.We specialize in such cases and you may consult us for case to case opinion.
However here follows a brief description;
It will be termed as self- Plagiarism(illegal) if it violates policies concerning the expectation of originality or if the copyrights are sold to another party/publisher.It is punishable under copyrights Act 1999.IPC does not normally deal with it.Plagiarism necessarily required some agreement or understanding to be broken to be called illegal.
A person who pays another to create a work becomes the initial copyright owner, not the person who actually created it e.g.
• a work created by an employee within the scope of employment, or
• a commissioned work that falls within a certain category of works and that is the subject of a written agreement.
Sometimes an author transfers copyright to someone and then later the author reacquires it through a process known as “terminating a transfer.” Copyright laws provide a method by which authors can reclaim rights after a number of years. This termination and reclamation process is complex, and the rules differ depending on when the work was first published. As a very general rule, transfer terminations occur between 28 and 56 years after the first publication. Terminations are filed with the Copyright Office and can be located by researching Copyright Office records.
Regards

Advocate Rishi Kulshresth LawRato

568 votes

yes it is , Plagiarism is primarily an ethical issue (even though it is often confused with copyright infringement). It involves using the work of another author without attributing him/her. To have committed plagiarism, it is not necessary to exactly copy the words contained in the earlier work.

Pertinently, Section 57 of the Copyright Act grants authors the “Special Right” to be attributed for their work. Widely referred to as a moral right, this right is perpetual, is independent of copyright, and remains unaffected by transfers of copyright ownership. Thus, the right to attribution recognised by statute could be considered analogous to the right not to be plagiarised. Further, Section 63 of the Copyright Act which deals with infringement as a criminal offence contemplates the same punishment for both the violation of Section 57 and for copyright infringement.

Advocate Nischal Arvind Singh LawRato

923 votes

Before answering this question I will clarify that this answer is correct only to the extent the information has been provided in the question and not over and above that. There are lots of key chain point missing in this question which is required to be known especially under Copyright Act, 1957 to give a full clear picture.
Now coming back to the point. As per Indian law there are no such crime known as plagiarism so further adding a term to it making it a sub-set of the original crime is not even a point to be pondered on.
Now let's go back to the declaration made earlier by me. Under Copyright Act, 1957 the crime mentioned for violation of copyright is 'copyright infringement'. Both civil and criminal remedies are available against it. Punishment under criminal remedies is one year imprisonment or fine or both. But as I said the above said information is not apt to state whether the act will be termed as copyright infringement or not.
I hope my point is clear to you.

Advocate Pulkit Prakash LawRato

992 votes

Self Plagiarism is not an offence or a wrong under the Copyright Act in India as the author as owner of copyright has all rights to reproduction of the work or to make adaptations of such work will also lie with the author being the owner of copyright. However, it may be an issue if the author has assigned the copyright in the work to another party (such as publisher) or licensed the work and is contractually bound not to use the work himself or for any third party.

Advocate Ishani Chandra LawRato