Copyright Bill to drop ‘parallel import’ clause

With the Parliamentary Standing Committee having recently cleared the Bill,it is set to be taken to Cabinet soon for approval without the ‘parallel import’ clause.

At the centre of the controversy are amendments proposed to Section 2(m) of the Act which say that “a copy of a work published in any country outside India with the permission of the author of the work and imported from that country into India shall not be deemed to be an infringing copy”. So a foreign edition of a book published abroad could be freely made available in India at an affordable cost provided there is approval of its author. As of now,most foreign titles are priced either at more or equivalent rates prevalent abroad.

The publishing industry issue apart,the legislation will also factor in changes proposed by the parliamentary panel with regard to disabled persons,including greater access to reading material for the visually disadvantaged by allowing them to convert books to any format and not just Braille.

The only issue which remains unresolved is royalty sharing between film producers and creative artists.