Editing Openai/6924739c-2300-800e-9743-65c152c213f1 (section)

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Why it matters here
* The Court held that headnotes, case summaries, topical indexes and the compilation of reported decisions are original works in which copyright subsists.
* It also set the “skill and judgment” test for originality (rejecting pure “sweat of the brow”), and developed a structured fair dealing framework (purpose, character, amount, alternatives, nature of work, effect).

Relevance to this case
* Direct analogue to Westlaw: CCH explicitly recognizes copyright in law-reporter headnotes, summaries, and indexes – the very sort of editorial content at issue here.
* Its fair-dealing analysis (especially the emphasis on “user’s rights” and technological neutrality) is a natural comparative reference point for U.S. fair use arguments about copying headnotes to support legal research tools.

===== What it held =====
* EBC publishes Supreme Court Cases (SCC) law reports. Defendants produced CD-ROM law databases alleged to have copied SCC’s materials.
* The Indian Supreme Court: - Agreed that headnotes, editorial notes, and some formatting/structural edits are copyright-protected; - Rejected copyright in the raw judgment text itself (public domain), but held that some copy-editing and structuring can reach the originality threshold; - Adopted the CCH “skill and judgment” standard, rejecting both pure sweat-of-the-brow and a high creativity threshold.

Relevance
* Factually very close: a law-report publisher vs. a digital legal research/database provider accused of using the publisher’s edited judgments and headnotes in electronic products.
* The court drew a line between public-domain judicial text and copyrightable editorial enhancements (headnotes, footnotes, paragraphing, introductions), then limited what could be freely reused.
* That structure maps closely onto arguments about what parts of Westlaw content ROSS could ingest, and whether copying for a competitor research platform is infringing.

===== What happened =====
* Reporters provided case reports for The Jurist; each report had a headnote summarizing the decision.
* The defendants published a monthly digest which reproduced headnotes/marginal notes from various reports (including The Jurist).
* The court held the plaintiffs had copyright in the reports, and the copying of the headnotes into the digest amounted to piracy.

Relevance
* Classic authority on copyright in law-report headnotes and on copying those headnotes into a separate digest product.
* Strong comparative support for Thomson Reuters’ side that headnotes and classification-style editorial content are protectable and can’t simply be taken into a competing system.

===== - Eastern Book Co. v LexisNexis injunction: later Indian proceedings confirmed injunctive protection for EBC’s law-report content against a competing legal database. =====
* David Vaver, “Copyright Inside the Law Library”: summarises Canadian law that publishers can object to copying of their headnotes, digests, and cumulative indices such as those in Dominion Law Reports.

These are secondary or follow-on, but they reinforce a transnational pattern: courts routinely protect law-report editorial matter separate from public-domain judgments.