Two-Step Test Decides Copyright or Design Protection for Industrial Drawings; Plaint Cannot Be Rejected at Threshold

Inox India Limited sued Cryogas Equipment and LNG Express before the Commercial Court at Vadodara on 24.09.2018, alleging infringement of copyright in its engineering drawings for LNG semi-trailers and in related literary works, and claiming Rs. 2 crores as damages (para 4). LNG Express sought rejection of the plaint, contending that the drawings were unregistered designs reproduced more than fifty times by an industrial process, so Section 15(2) ended any copyright (para 4). The Commercial Court twice rejected the plaint; the Gujarat High Court twice set that aside, finally on 22.10.2024 (paras 2, 4).

An 'artistic work' under Section 2(c) is very wide, may lack visual appeal, and its holder may reproduce it in any material form (para 55). When it is reproduced by an industrial process into a finished article that appeals to the eye, its features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornament become a 'design' under Section 2(d) of the Designs Act (para 56). The original artistic work keeps its copyright; only the derived design applied industrially falls under Section 15(2) and is protected only if registered (paras 57-58). A work that is not an artistic work does not receive design protection by default, because courts apply the test of functional utility (para 59). Drawing on High Court decisions, American law on conceptual separability and TRIPS, the Court adopted a two-pronged test: is the work purely artistic or an industrially applied design, and, if not copyrightable, what is its dominant purpose (paras 39, 47, 53, 60)? The nature of Inox's drawings was a mixed question of law and fact that could not be decided at the preliminary stage (para 67). The Commercial Court misread the plaint and overlooked the distinction between artistic work and design (para 68).