The digital transformation of education represents one of the most significant shifts in the organization of knowledge transmission that human society has undergone since the invention of the printing press. Massive Open Online Courses MOOCs delivered through platforms like Coursera, edX, NPTEL, Swayam and their many competitors, have made it possible for a student in a remote district of Rajasthan or a working professional in Chennai to access instruction from the world’s leading universities and subject matter experts without leaving their home. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this transformation dramatically, compelling educational institutions at every level to migrate their teaching activities to digital platforms and confronting educators, students and institutions with copyright questions that had previously arisen only at the margins of academic practice.
India’s stake in this transformation is enormous. India has one of the largest student populations in the world, one of the fastest-growing edtech sectors and a government that has made digital education a central policy priority through the Swayam platform, the DIKSHA initiative, the National Digital Library and the broader framework of the National Education Policy, 2020. The legal framework governing copyright in e-learning and online educational content is therefore not a peripheral academic concern but a question of central practical importance for millions of educators, millions of students, hundreds of edtech companies and dozens of universities and institutions engaged in the creation and delivery of digital education.
The Copyright Act, 1957 is the primary statutory framework governing copyright in educational content, but its provisions drafted in 1957 and significantly amended in 2012 were not designed with e-learning in mind. The application of its provisions to online educational contexts requires careful analysis that courts have only begun to undertake. The fair dealing and educational exceptions in Section 52, the moral rights provisions of Section 57, the ownership rules of Section 17 and the enforcement framework of Sections 51 and 55 all apply in the e-learning context but their specific application to the unique characteristics of online educational delivery raises questions that the existing framework answers imperfectly.
This article offers a comprehensive examination of copyright in e-learning, MOOCs and online education content under Indian law examining the categories of works involved in online education, the copyright ownership questions that arise in educational institutions, the scope and limits of the educational fair dealing exceptions, the specific questions raised by MOOCs and open educational resources, the treatment of recorded lectures and course videos, the licensing frameworks for educational content, the enforcement of copyright against infringement of online educational materials and the reform agenda for a framework that requires significant updating.
The Categories of Works in Online Education
Online educational content is not a single type of work it is a complex assemblage of multiple distinct categories of works, each attracting different copyright analysis. Understanding the specific copyright character of each component is the prerequisite for any accurate analysis of the rights involved in online education.
The lecture itself whether delivered live over video conferencing or recorded for asynchronous access is a form of oral literary work. Section 2(q) of the Copyright Act defined “performance” in its pre-1994 form to include any mode of visual or acoustic presentation and the current definition treats lectures as qualifying performances under certain conditions. Section 52(1)(a) specifically includes the reporting of a lecture delivered in public within the fair dealing provisions, reflecting the recognition that lectures constitute a distinct category of protected expression. A recorded lecture a video of an educator explaining a concept, demonstrating a technique or presenting an argument is simultaneously a literary work (the spoken content), an artistic work (the visual elements of any slides or demonstrations), a dramatic work (where the delivery involves scripted or structured presentation), a cinematograph film (the video recording) and a sound recording (the audio track). Each of these copyright layers is independently protectable and vests in the relevant author or producer.
Presentation slides the visual aids that accompany a lecture are artistic works under Section 2(c) and may additionally constitute literary works where they contain substantial text. Original slides designed by an educator for their course are the educator’s original artistic and literary works, attracting copyright protection in the educator as author, subject to the employment and commissioning rules of Section 17.
Course notes, reading materials and textbooks whether original works created by the educator or excerpts from existing published materials are literary works. Where they are the educator’s original composition, the educator holds the copyright. Where they are excerpts from existing works, the use of those excerpts requires authorization either through the educational fair dealing exception under Section 52 or through a licence from the rights holder.
Assessment materials examination questions, problem sets, case studies and assignments are literary works created by educators and potentially attract copyright protection where they embody original expression. The copyright in assessment materials has been a specific subject of controversy in the context of commercial test preparation services that reproduce examination questions without authorization.
Videos, animations, simulations and interactive learning objects created specifically for online education are increasingly sophisticated creative works that attract multiple layers of copyright protection. A professionally produced MOOC video with scripted presentation, original graphics, recorded demonstrations, background music and post-production editing involves literary works (the script), artistic works (the graphics and visual design), dramatic works (the structured presentation), musical works (background music), sound recordings and cinematograph films (the video recording). Each element requires copyright clearance if it is not the original creation of the course producer.
Open educational resources freely available educational materials licensed for use, adaptation and redistribution without royalty represent a growing category of educational content whose legal character is defined by the specific open licence under which they are released, typically one of the Creative Commons licence family.
Copyright Ownership in Educational Institutions – The Critical Question
The most commercially and practically significant copyright question in the e-learning context is the ownership of copyright in educational works created by faculty members employed at universities and educational institutions. This question determines who owns the recorded lectures, the course materials, the assessment content and the MOOC videos that represent the primary intellectual output of the educational enterprise and therefore who has the right to commercialize, license and distribute that content.
Under the general rule of Section 17 of the Copyright Act, the author of a work is the first owner of the copyright. For an educator who independently creates course materials preparing lectures, writing notes, designing slides the educator is the author and the first owner of the copyright in those materials as a matter of straightforward application of the general rule.
The qualification is proviso (b) to Section 17, which provides that where a work is made by the author in the course of their employment under a contract of service or apprenticeship, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, the employer shall be the first owner of the copyright. If a university faculty member creates course materials in the course of their employment which, on a straightforward reading, is exactly what preparing and delivering lectures constitutes the employer university is the first copyright owner under proviso (b), not the faculty member.
This is the academic copyright question one of the most contested in educational intellectual property and it has not been definitively resolved by Indian courts. The difficulty is that the academic tradition has historically proceeded on the assumption that faculty members own the copyright in their scholarly and pedagogical works their books, their articles, their lecture materials. This tradition is so deeply embedded in academic culture that most universities do not address it expressly in employment agreements, relying instead on informal understandings that are legally precarious.
The “teacher exception” is a doctrinal development in several jurisdictions including the United Kingdom that has carved out an exception to the employer ownership rule specifically for works created by academic staff in the exercise of their teaching and research functions. The rationale is that academic appointments are made for the purpose of the faculty member’s own scholarship and teaching rather than for the production of works owned by the university and that the employer ownership rule was not intended to apply to this specific employment context. Indian courts have not expressly recognized a teacher exception and the Copyright Act contains no specific provision creating one.
In the MOOC context, the academic copyright question takes on additional commercial significance. When a university produces a MOOC committing significant institutional resources to filming, editing, producing and distributing course content through a global platform the question of whether the university owns the resulting intellectual property or whether the participating faculty member does becomes commercially very important. A faculty member who owns the copyright in a popular MOOC course has the right to withdraw it from the platform, license it to a competitor or commercialize it independently. A university that owns the copyright has the corresponding control over these commercial decisions.
The practical resolution to this uncertainty is the adoption by educational institutions of comprehensive intellectual property policies that expressly address faculty copyright ownership specifying which works belong to the institution, which belong to the faculty member and which are jointly owned or owned by the institution with a licence to the faculty member. The National Education Policy, 2020 encourages the development of such policies at the institutional level, recognizing that the absence of clear ownership frameworks impedes the effective commercialization and open sharing of educational content created with institutional resources.
The Educational Fair Dealing Exceptions – Section 52
Section 52 of the Copyright Act provides a set of exceptions to copyright protection that permit certain uses of copyrighted works without authorization. The provisions most relevant to education are examined below, with specific attention to their application in the online context.
Section 52(1)(a) provides that fair dealing with any work for the purposes of private or personal use including research, criticism, review and the reporting of current events shall not constitute infringement. The private study and research exception permits a student who accesses an online educational resource to make a personal copy for their own study purposes. It does not permit the educational institution to reproduce and distribute materials to all students.
Section 52(1)(h) provides that the reproduction of any work by a teacher or a pupil in the course of instruction shall not constitute infringement. This provision is the primary basis for educational reproduction rights in India. Its application in the online context raises questions that the Delhi High Court addressed in the Rameshwari Photocopy Services litigation and that have not been definitively resolved in the specific context of digital course materials distributed through e-learning platforms.
The Rameshwari Photocopy Services case in which the Delhi High Court held that photocopying of portions of textbooks for course packs distributed to students at Delhi University fell within the Section 52(1)(h) exception established important principles for the educational exception that have direct relevance for e-learning. The Court held that the educational exception must be interpreted purposively to advance access to education, that the reproduction of portions of educational works for use in the course of instruction does not conflict with the normal exploitation of those works in ways that unreasonably prejudice rights holders’ interests and that the exception covers reproduction by an entity acting on behalf of the teacher or student in the educational context.
The application of these principles to digital reproduction for e-learning purposes the upload of course materials to a learning management system, the streaming of recorded lectures, the distribution of digital course packs requires an extension of the Rameshwari reasoning that courts have not yet provided. The physical reproduction in Rameshwari involved photocopied pages distributed to students attending a physical campus. Digital reproduction for e-learning involves the upload of materials to a server accessible to potentially thousands of students across India and internationally. The scale and character of the reproduction are different and it is not clear that the Rameshwari analysis extends without qualification to this very different factual context.
Section 52(1)(i) provides that the reading or recitation in public of any reasonable extract from a published work shall not constitute infringement. In the e-learning context, this provision may justify the reading of short extracts from published works in recorded lectures, where the extract is genuinely reasonable in length relative to the work as a whole and is used for legitimate pedagogical purposes.
Section 52(1)(ia) permits any library or organization in the business of lending books to lend books to any person. The application of this provision to digital lending the provision of ebook access through digital library systems has not been resolved in the Indian context, though the issue is increasingly practically significant as educational institutions migrate their library collections to digital formats.
MOOCs and the Scale Problem
Massive Open Online Courses present copyright challenges that differ qualitatively from those of traditional classroom education precisely because of their massive scale. A lecture delivered to thirty students in a seminar room and a MOOC lecture viewed by three hundred thousand students in ninety countries engage the copyright framework in fundamentally different ways, even if the intellectual content of the two lectures is identical.
The educational fair dealing exception under Section 52(1)(h) reproduction by a teacher or pupil in the course of instruction may not comfortably extend to the global distribution of educational content through commercial MOOC platforms. The exception was drafted with traditional educational settings in mind and its scope in the context of courses delivered commercially to a worldwide audience through for-profit or revenue-sharing platforms is genuinely uncertain.
The commercial character of many MOOC arrangements where the platform charges users for certificates, where the institution receives revenue from the platform and where the course content is exploited as a commercial product arguably places MOOC content outside the scope of fair dealing for educational purposes, which has traditionally been understood as covering non-commercial educational use. Where a MOOC course incorporates copyrighted third-party content journal articles, film clips, musical recordings, photographs the copyright holders of that content may have legitimate claims that the fair dealing exception does not cover the MOOC distribution, requiring specific licensing.
The NPTEL platform developed jointly by seven Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science under the Ministry of Education and the Swayam platform, the Government of India’s national MOOC platform, have addressed these copyright challenges through institutional agreements that seek to ensure that course content complies with copyright law. The NPTEL and Swayam policies generally require course developers to use only original content, properly licensed content or content within the public domain and to obtain clearances for any third-party copyrighted content included in their courses.
International MOOC platforms Coursera, edX, Udemy and others operate in India under their global terms of service and content policies, which typically require course creators to ensure that all content in their courses is either original, licensed or within the public domain. These platforms’ content policies effectively impose private copyright governance obligations on course creators that supplement and in some respects exceed the requirements of Indian copyright law.
Recorded Lectures – The Video Layer
Recorded lectures the video format in which most MOOC and online educational content is delivered present a specific set of copyright questions that distinguish them from other forms of educational content.
A recorded lecture is a cinematograph film within the meaning of Section 2(f) of the Copyright Act a visual recording on a medium produced through a process from which a moving image may be produced. The producer of the recorded lecture the person or institution that takes the initiative and responsibility for its production is the author of the cinematograph film under Section 2(d)(v) and the first owner of the copyright under the general rules of Section 17 as qualified by the employment and commissioning provisos.
The production of a recorded lecture involves multiple individual creative contributions: the educator’s intellectual content and delivery, the videographer’s visual framing and camera work, the editor’s post-production decisions, the graphic designer’s slide and visual design and potentially the voice talent and technical crew. Each of these contributions may independently attract copyright in the relevant contributor and the rights chain for a professionally produced MOOC video must address each of these contributions through appropriate employment agreements or contractor assignments.
The sound recording that accompanies the video the audio track of the lecturer’s voice is separately protectable as a sound recording under Section 2(xx) and Section 14(e) of the Copyright Act. The producer of the sound recording holds the communication right under Section 14(e)(iii), independently of the copyright in the intellectual content of the lecture.
The public communication of recorded lectures through e-learning platforms making them available for streaming on demand by enrolled students or, in the case of open MOOCs, by any member of the public engages the communication to the public right under Section 14(d)(iii) for the cinematograph film and Section 14(e)(iii) for the sound recording. This right must be held or licensed by the institution or platform that operates the e-learning service and its scope determines the permissible modes of distribution.
Third-Party Content in Online Education – The Clearance Problem
One of the most practically challenging copyright questions in online education is the use of third-party copyrighted content within educational courses. Educators who have for years used photocopied journal articles, film clips, musical recordings and images in their physical classroom teaching relying on informal fair dealing assumptions or simply not addressing the copyright question are confronted with much sharper copyright obligations when that content is digitally reproduced and distributed through an online platform.
The incorporation of journal articles in online course reading lists raises specific questions about the scope of database subscriptions and fair dealing. Many university libraries maintain subscriptions to journal databases Elsevier, Springer, Wiley and others that permit on-campus access to journal content. The extension of that access to enrolled students accessing the material remotely through an e-learning platform may exceed the scope of the institutional subscription licence, depending on its specific terms. Institutions must review their database subscription terms to determine whether they cover remote access through e-learning platforms before uploading journal articles as course reading materials.
The use of film clips and musical recordings in online course content playing a clip from a documentary to illustrate a concept, including a musical recording to demonstrate a technique requires copyright clearance that the educational exception may not fully provide in the digital context. The broadcaster’s exception under Section 37 of the Copyright Act and the specific educational exceptions under Section 52 do not clearly extend to the streaming of film clips and recordings through e-learning platforms and institutions should obtain specific licences for such uses or restrict their online educational content to commentary, analysis and description of copyrighted works rather than direct reproduction.
Images and photographs incorporated in presentation slides and course materials require copyright clearance unless they are the educator’s original work, are in the public domain or are licensed under Creative Commons or other open licences. The common academic practice of using images found through internet search engines without verifying their copyright status or obtaining a licence is legally precarious the fact that an image is freely accessible on the internet does not mean that it is freely available for reproduction in commercial e-learning content.
Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons Licensing
Open Educational Resources OERs are educational materials released under licences that permit free use, adaptation and redistribution by educators and students. The Creative Commons licence family provides the most widely used framework for OER licensing, offering a suite of standardized licence terms that allow rights holders to grant broad permissions while retaining specified controls.
The six Creative Commons licence types range from the most permissive CC BY, which permits any use including commercial use with attribution to the most restrictive Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND, which permits non-commercial use with attribution but prohibits adaptation. Between these poles are CC BY-SA (permissive with share-alike requirement), CC BY-NC (non-commercial with attribution), CC BY-ND (permits distribution but not adaptation) and CC BY-NC-SA (non-commercial, attribution, share-alike).
The Creative Commons licence framework is particularly valuable for online education because it provides legally clear permissions for the reproduction, distribution and adaptation of educational materials in a format that educators and institutions can understand and apply without requiring case-by-case rights clearance. The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning NPTEL has made its extensive library of engineering and science course videos available under Creative Commons licences, providing freely accessible high-quality educational content for Indian students and educators.
The enforceability of Creative Commons licences under Indian law has not been tested in Indian courts, but the general principles of contract law under the Indian Contract Act, 1872 provide the basis for treating Creative Commons licences as valid contractual grants of permission. The Creative Commons licence constitutes an offer by the rights holder of permission to use the work subject to the specified conditions and acceptance occurs through the exercise of the licensed rights. Violation of a Creative Commons licence’s conditions using a CC BY-NC licensed work for commercial purposes or failing to attribute a CC BY licensed work constitutes both a breach of the licence conditions and copyright infringement, because the permission granted by the licence is conditional on compliance with its terms.
Accessibility and Copyright – The Marrakesh Treaty Framework
The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, ratified by India in 2014 and implemented through the 2012 amendment to the Copyright Act, provides a specific framework for the creation and distribution of accessible format educational materials for persons with print disabilities.
Section 52(1)(zb) of the Copyright Act, introduced by the 2012 amendment in anticipation of Marrakesh Treaty ratification, permits any person to make or cause to be made, for the personal use of a person with disability, any accessible format copy of a work. In the e-learning context, this provision permits educational institutions to create screen-reader compatible versions of course materials, audio descriptions of visual content, captioned versions of video lectures and other accessible format adaptations of course content for students with disabilities.
The accessibility obligations under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 impose additional requirements on educational institutions including requirements that digital educational content be made accessible to students with disabilities. The intersection of copyright law and disability rights law in the e-learning context creates a set of obligations and permissions that institutions must navigate in designing accessible digital education programmes.
The practical implementation of accessibility in e-learning requires both the creation of accessible format alternatives to standard course materials and the availability of those alternatives through the institution’s learning management system. Both the creation of accessible formats under Section 52(1)(zb) and their distribution through e-learning platforms must be addressed in the institution’s copyright compliance framework.
Enforcement of Copyright in Online Educational Content
The enforcement of copyright in online educational content involves both the enforcement of rights by educational institutions and individual educators against unauthorized reproduction of their materials and the enforcement of third-party rights against educational content producers who incorporate copyrighted material without authorization.
Educational institutions whose course materials recorded lectures, course notes, assessment materials and other educational content are reproduced without authorization by commercial test preparation services, competing institutions or individual users have recourse under Section 55 of the Copyright Act for civil remedies including injunctions and damages. The registration of course materials with the Copyright Office, as discussed in the article on copyright registration, provides the prima facie evidence of ownership that facilitates enforcement proceedings.
The specific problem of examination question and assessment material reproduction is particularly significant for educational institutions and professional examination bodies. Commercial coaching centres and test preparation services that reproduce official examination questions including questions from the Joint Entrance Examination, the UPSC examinations and professional licensing examinations without authorization may infringe the copyright in those materials. The copyright in examination questions vests in the examination body the IITs, the UPSC, the relevant professional council and reproduction without authorization constitutes infringement. Several examination bodies have taken enforcement action against commercial reproduction of their question papers, though the legal basis for these claims has not been comprehensively tested in the courts.
The enforcement of third-party rights against educational content producers requires a different analysis. Where an educational institution or MOOC producer has incorporated copyrighted content journal articles, film clips, musical recordings, images without authorization or without adequate fair dealing justification, the rights holder of that content has grounds for enforcement action. The practical response for educational institutions is to implement comprehensive copyright compliance programmes that require course producers to obtain clearances for all third-party content before including it in digital course materials.
The Swayam and NPTEL Framework
The Government of India’s Swayam platform Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds and the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning NPTEL represent India’s largest publicly funded e-learning initiatives and have developed specific copyright frameworks that reflect both the educational mission and the intellectual property realities of their scale.
NPTEL, which has produced thousands of course videos covering engineering, science and humanities subjects delivered by faculty from IITs and Wisc, makes its content available under Creative Commons licences that permit free non-commercial use with attribution. This licensing approach making high-quality educational content available for free while retaining attribution requirements reflects the public educational mission of NPTEL while providing a legally defined framework for the use and adaptation of its content.
Swayam’s content policies require course developers who are typically faculty members from participating universities to ensure that all content in their courses is either original, properly licensed or in the public domain. The policies require specific copyright clearances for third-party content and provide guidance on the use of Creative Commons licensed materials. The institutional framework for copyright compliance in Swayam courses represents one of the most detailed and publicly available copyright governance frameworks for online education in India.
The National Digital Library of India which aggregates educational resources from multiple sources for access by students and educators operates under a framework that addresses both the copyright in the aggregated resources and the terms on which they are made available through the platform. The NDL’s metadata aggregation model which provides information about and links to educational resources rather than reproducing the resources themselves reduces copyright exposure relative to a model that reproduced full text resources without authorization.
Key Cases and Legal Developments
The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford v. Rameshwari Photocopy Services (2016) is the most significant Indian judicial decision on educational copyright and has direct relevance for e-learning copyright analysis. The Delhi High Court’s holding that photocopying of portions of textbooks for course packs falls within Section 52(1)(h) provides the primary judicial guidance on the scope of the educational exception in India. While the case addressed physical photocopying rather than digital reproduction, its reasoning that educational exceptions must be interpreted purposively to advance access to education provides a framework for analyzing digital educational reproduction.
Wiley Eastern Ltd. v. Indian Institute of Management (1995) involved a claim by a textbook publisher against an educational institution that had reproduced substantial portions of the publisher’s textbooks for course materials. The Delhi High Court’s analysis of the scope of the educational exception finding that reproduction of substantial portions of textbooks for course distribution was not covered by the exception provides an important boundary marker for the scope of permitted educational reproduction, though the case predates the current Section 52 framework and the MOOC context.
Academy of General Education v. B. Malini Mallya (2009) addressed copyright in educational material created in the course of employment at an educational institution, providing judicial guidance on the application of the Section 17 proviso (b) employer ownership rule in the academic employment context. The Karnataka High Court’s analysis affirmed that works created by academic employees in the course of their employment attract the employer ownership rule absent contrary agreement.
Practical Guidance for Institutions, Educators and Platforms
For educational institutions developing e-learning programmes and MOOCs, the following practical priorities reflect the copyright framework examined in this article.
Intellectual property policies must be developed and adopted at the institutional level, clearly addressing copyright ownership in faculty-created educational works, the institution’s right to commercialize those works, the revenue sharing arrangements for commercially exploited MOOC content and the process for obtaining copyright clearances for third-party content incorporated in online courses.
Content audit procedures should be implemented for all online courses before publication, requiring course developers to identify all third-party copyrighted material incorporated in their courses, confirm the basis on which each use is justified fair dealing exception, Creative Commons licence, specific licence clearance or public domain status and obtain clearances for any uses not covered by existing justifications.
Employment and contractor agreements with faculty, content producers, instructional designers, videographers and other contributors to e-learning content must include express copyright provisions specifying ownership of the created works and granting the institution the rights required for the intended distribution model.
Licence clearance procedures should be established for the use of third-party content including journal articles, film clips, musical recordings and images identifying the appropriate licensing contacts, the scope of required permissions and the timeline for obtaining clearances before course publication.
The Reform Agenda – What Indian Law Needs
The existing Copyright Act framework, applied to e-learning and online educational content, leaves significant gaps that legislative reform should address.
A specific exception for distance and online education expressly permitting digital reproduction and communication of educational works for accredited educational institutions delivering online courses would resolve the ambiguity about whether the Section 52(1)(h) exception extends to digital course delivery. Such an exception, modelled on the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act in the United States or the distance education exceptions in Australian and Canadian copyright law, would provide a clear legal basis for online educational reproduction without requiring case-by-case fair dealing analysis.
Express resolution of the academic copyright question whether faculty members or their employing institutions own copyright in educational works created in the course of academic employment would reduce the legal uncertainty that currently impedes both the commercialization and the open sharing of educational content. A legislative provision recognizing that faculty members retain copyright in their scholarly and pedagogical works, subject to institutional use rights defined by the employment relationship, would align Indian law with academic tradition and international best practice.
A text and data mining exception for non-commercial educational and research purposes permitting digital reproduction for the purpose of training educational AI systems and for computational analysis of educational content would address the emerging AI dimension of educational copyright and provide a legal basis for the development of AI-powered educational tools.
Conclusion
Copyright in e-learning, MOOCs and online educational content is a field of growing practical importance and significant legal uncertainty. The Copyright Act’s educational exceptions were designed for a world of physical classrooms and printed course materials; their extension to the digital educational environment requires interpretation that the Act’s text does not clearly compel and that courts have only begun to provide.
For India’s rapidly growing ed tech sector, for the government’s ambitious digital education programmes and for the millions of educators and students who participate in online learning, the legal framework examined in this article represents both the current state of the law and the agenda for its reform. The foundational principles of the Copyright Act automatic subsistence of copyright in educational works, the educational fair dealing exceptions of Section 52, the employment ownership rules of Section 17 and the enforcement framework of Sections 51 and 55 provide the framework within which online education must currently operate. But that framework requires legislative development that is both urgent and achievable and the National Education Policy 2020’s recognition of digital education as a national priority provides the policy imperative for the reforms that this article has identified.
References
- The Copyright Act, 1957, Sections 2(c), 2(d), 2(f), 2(o), 2(q), 2(xx), 13, 14, 17, 51, 52, 55, 57, 65B – https://copyright.gov.in/Documents/CopyrightRules1958.pdf
- The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 – https://copyright.gov.in/Documents/Amendment_Act2012.pdf
- The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 – https://niepvd.nic.in/the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-rpwd-act-2016/
- The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works, 2013 – https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh/
- The National Education Policy, 2020 – https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/userfiles/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf
- Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford v. Rameshwari Photocopy Services, CS(OS) 2439/2012 (Delhi High Court, 2016) – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/114459608/
- Wiley Eastern Ltd. v. Indian Institute of Management, AIR 1995 Delhi 300 – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1017103/
- Academy of General Education v. B. Malini Mallya, (2009) ILR Karnataka 3444 – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/184940/
- Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 SCC 1 – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1062099/
- R.G. Anand v. Deluxe Films & Ors., AIR 1978 SC 1613 – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1734007/
- Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works – https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/
- WIPO Copyright Treaty, 1996 – https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/
- TRIPS Agreement – https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips.pdf
- NPTEL – https://nptel.ac.in
- Swayam – https://swayam.gov.in
- National Digital Library of India – https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in
- Creative Commons – https://creativecommons.org
- Copyright Office of India – https://copyright.gov.in
Compulsory Licensing Copyright Act Copyright Act 1957 copyright case laws Copyright Enforcement Copyright Infringement Copyright Law copyright protection Copyright Protection India Copyright Registration Copyright Rules Deceptive Similarity Descriptive Marks India FRAND obligations Goodwill Indian IP Framework Indian Patent Act Indian Patent Law Indian Trademark Law Intellectual Property Law IP Law India Patent Claims Patent Enforcement Patent Infringement Patent law Patent Revocation Patents Act Patents Act 1970 Pharmaceutical Patents Secondary Meaning Trademark Section 9 Trade Marks Act Section 11 Section 13 Section 29 The Patent Act 1970 Trademark Assignment India Trademark Dilution Trademark Examination India Trademark Infringement Trademark Registration Trade Marks Act 1999 Trade Marks Rules 2017 Trans-border Reputation TRIPS Compliance Well-Known Trademark