The Copyright Act, 1957

What it does

The Act protects the expression of an idea and not the idea. Copyright subsists in original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, in cinematograph films and in sound recordings, and it gives the owner a bundle of exclusive rights to copy, publish, adapt, perform and communicate the work to the public. A computer programme is within the Act as a literary work.

It also deals with ownership. The author is the first owner, with exceptions for works made in the course of employment under a contract of service and for certain commissioned works. Section 18 lets the owner assign the right and section 19 sets the formalities of an assignment, including that it be in writing and signed, and what follows where the instrument is silent on duration, extent or territory.

Infringement is copying a substantial part of a protected work without licence. Section 52 lists acts that are not infringement, and it includes fair dealing for private or personal use, including research, for criticism or review, and for reporting current events. The Act also creates offences, and the civil remedies are an injunction, damages and an account of profits.

The Act also protects moral rights. An author may claim authorship and may object to a distortion or mutilation of the work that would harm the author's honour or reputation, and the right survives assignment of the economic right.

Who it binds

Anyone who copies or otherwise uses a protected work in India, and, through the reciprocal arrangements with other countries under the international conventions India has joined, works first published abroad. A business is bound as a user of other people's work, as an employer whose staff create work, and as a licensor and licensee of rights.

What has changed, and when

The Act has been amended several times. The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 reworked the position of authors of works used in films and sound recordings, adding provisions about the assignment of rights and the sharing of royalties, and it made the Act compliant with the WIPO internet treaties, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

What turns on it in practice

The practice area on this site for intellectual property and licensing covers the protection, licensing and enforcement of trade marks, patents, copyright and trade secrets. In a licence, the points of substance are the scope of the licensed right, the term and territory, and what the assignment clause leaves with the author by default.

The Act is also in the centre of the question of training data for artificial intelligence. The firm's note on AI, patents, trade secrets and training data records that on 24 July 2026 the Delhi High Court, in ANI Media Private Limited v. OpenAI OPCO LLC, refused an interim injunction. On a prima facie view, storing works to train a language model fell within the fair dealing provision in section 52(1)(a). The same note records a working paper issued in December 2025 by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, which proposed a licence and remuneration model for training. The decision was on an interim application, and the working paper is a proposal. The Act itself has not been amended for training data, and the practice area on artificial intelligence advises on how Indian law applies to that question today.