Every copyright dispute in India eventually returns to a single question: what exactly did the plaintiff own, and what did the defendant take? The answer almost never lies in the whole work. It lies in the line the law draws between an idea, which anyone may use, and the particular way an author has expressed that idea, which only the author may control. That line is the idea-expression dichotomy, and it decides whether a screenwriter can stop a rival film, whether a television producer can restrain a copycat format, whether a game designer can monopolise the rules of play, and, as the Delhi High Court has now shown in the ANI litigation against OpenAI, whether a news agency can claim exclusivity over facts it has reported.
The Copyright Act, 1957 does not use the words “idea” or “expression” in any operative provision. The dichotomy is a judicial construction, drawn out of Section 13(1)(a), which confers copyright on “original” literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, and out of Section 14, which gives the owner exclusive rights in respect of the work “or any substantial part thereof”. It was given its authoritative Indian statement by the Supreme Court in 1978 and has been refined since by High Courts dealing with scripts, television formats, board games, gene sequences and now machine-learning datasets. Because the doctrine is judge-made, its edges move with each fact pattern, which is why practitioners need a working map of the decided cases and not merely a slogan.
This article sets out that map. It begins with the statutory text and the international instruments, turns to the Supreme Court’s formulation in R.G. Anand and its treatment of originality in Eastern Book Company, then follows the doctrine through narrative works, concepts and formats, the merger doctrine, and the fact-expression divide in the ANI decision, before comparing the Indian position with that of the United States and the European Union and closing with practical observations for advocates and creators.
The Statutory Foundation – Sections 13, 14 and 16 of the Copyright Act, 1957
Section 13(1) of the Copyright Act, 1957 provides that copyright shall subsist throughout India in original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, in cinematograph films, and in sound recordings. Section 2(y) defines “work” by reference to these same categories, and Section 2(o) defines “literary work” inclusively, so as to take in computer programmes, tables and compilations including computer databases. Nothing in these provisions extends to an idea as such. The categories are categories of works, and a work presupposes some embodiment in which the author’s contribution can be identified.
Section 14 reinforces this. It defines copyright as the exclusive right to do or authorise the doing of specified acts, such as reproducing the work in any material form or issuing copies to the public, “in respect of a work or any substantial part thereof”. The phrase “substantial part” carries the doctrine into the infringement inquiry: what the defendant must have taken is a substantial part of the plaintiff’s work, and a substantial part of a work can only be a substantial part of its expression.
Section 16 completes the frame. It provides that no person shall be entitled to copyright or any similar right in any work, published or unpublished, otherwise than under and in accordance with the Act or any other law for the time being in force. Its saving clause, however, states that nothing in the section abrogates any right or jurisdiction to restrain a breach of trust or confidence. This proviso is the doctrinal reason why an idea that copyright cannot protect may still be protected in equity when it is communicated in confidence, a point that becomes central when we reach concepts and formats.
International Anchors – TRIPS Article 9(2) and the WIPO Copyright Treaty
India’s position is consistent with its international commitments. Article 9(2) of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights provides that copyright protection shall extend to expressions and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such. Article 2 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty, 1996 repeats the formula in nearly identical words. Both instruments treat the exclusion of ideas as a structural feature of copyright and not as a matter of national discretion, and both explain why Indian courts have consistently resisted attempts to stretch copyright into a general right against competition in ideas, procedures or methods. Where such protection is warranted, the Indian scheme directs the claimant elsewhere: to the Patents Act, 1970, to the Designs Act, 2000, or to the law of confidence.
The Supreme Court’s Formulation – R.G. Anand v. Delux Films
The foundational Indian authority is R.G. Anand v. Delux Films, (1978) 4 SCC 118, decided by the Supreme Court in 1978. The appellant, a playwright, had written and staged a play titled “Hum Hindustani” and alleged that the film “New Delhi” was a colourable copy of it. Both works dealt with the theme of provincialism in India. The trial court and the High Court had found no infringement, and the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. It did so after the judges themselves viewed the film and heard the play read out in full, an unusual course that reflects how fact-sensitive the inquiry is.
The Court’s observations have since been summarised as a set of propositions that Indian courts apply almost mechanically. There can be no copyright in an idea, subject-matter, theme, plot, or historical or legendary fact, and a violation in such cases is confined to the form, manner and arrangement and expression of the idea by the author. Where the same idea is developed differently, similarities are bound to arise, and the question is whether the similarities relate to fundamental or substantial aspects of the mode of expression adopted in the copyrighted work. Where the theme is the same but is presented and treated differently, so that the later work becomes a completely new work, no question of violation arises. The test of infringement is applied from the standpoint of a reader, spectator or viewer after reading or viewing both works: if such a person comes away with the unmistakable impression that the later work is by and large a copy of the original, infringement may be said to be made out. On the facts, the Court found that the central theme of provincialism was common but was an unprotected idea, and that the film otherwise travelled well beyond the plot of the play.
Commentators have compared the R.G. Anand approach to the abstraction analysis of Learned Hand J. in the United States. The comparison is apt in one respect: both approaches recognise that every work can be described at progressively higher levels of generality, and that at some level the description ceases to be expression and becomes an idea. Indian courts have not formalized the levels as the American cases have, but the filtering of dissimilarities and the identification of what remains has become the working method of the High Courts.
Originality as the Gateway – Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak
The idea-expression dichotomy answers what is protected within a work; the originality requirement answers whether the work is protected at all. The two meet in Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 SCC 1, in which the Supreme Court considered whether the publishers of the Supreme Court Cases law reports could claim copyright in the edited versions of judgments that they had prepared. The Court rejected the “sweat of the brow” approach, under which labour and capital alone suffice, and also declined to adopt an unduly high standard of creativity. It settled on a middle path, borrowed from the Canadian Supreme Court’s formulation in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada: a work is original if it is the product of the author’s skill and judgment, with a flavour or modicum of creativity, though not novelty in the patent-law sense.
Applied to the facts, the Court held that the headnotes and similar editorial contributions, which required the editors to read the judgment, identify the legally significant propositions and express them accurately, met the standard, while routine copy-editing inputs did not. The significance for the present topic is that Modak anchors originality in expression. The raw judgments were facts of law in the public domain; what the publisher added by way of expression was the only candidate for protection, and only to the extent that it reflected real judgment. The decision therefore operates as the front door to the dichotomy: no originality in the expression, no copyright to infringe, however novel the underlying idea may be.
Where the Line Falls in Narrative Works – Themes, Plots and Scenes a Faire
The most frequent litigation on the dichotomy involves scripts and films. The Bombay High Court’s decision in Mansoob Haider v. Yashraj Films Pvt. Ltd., 2014 (59) PTC 292 (Bom), delivered by G.S. Patel J. on 20 June 2014, is a clear modern illustration. The plaintiff, a screenwriter, claimed that the film “Dhoom 3” infringed his script “ONCE” and sought to restrain its release on television through satellite broadcast. The Court compared the script and the film closely, and found that the plaintiff had not made out a prima facie case. It held that the overall premise, storyline and characters of the film were entirely different from the script, that the plaintiff failed to establish access and failed on the intrinsic comparison, and that the common elements were either not original to the plaintiff or were scones à faire, that is, incidents and situations that flow naturally from the genre and are available to every writer working in it. The Court also observed that the plaintiff’s own correspondence claimed copyright in the “uniqueness” of the plot, theme and premise, which is a claim to an idea, and that a unique premise is not the same as a copied expression.
The decision shows how the R.G. Anand method works in practice. The court strips away what is common property (themes, genre conventions, stock situations), examines what remains of the plaintiff’s particular selection and arrangement of incidents, characters and dialogue, and asks whether that residue has been taken. Where the residue is thin, the claim fails. A plaintiff who wishes to succeed must therefore show a pattern of specific correspondences in sequence, characterisation and treatment, and not merely a shared story idea.
Concepts, Formats and Confidence – Anil Gupta, Zee Telefilms and the Section 16 Saving
The harder cases lie between a bare idea and a finished script. Television formats and concept notes sit exactly there. In Anil Gupta v. Kunal Dasgupta, 2002 (25) PTC 1 (Del), decided by Vijender Jain J. on 6 March 2002, the plaintiff, a media consultant, had conceived a reality television programme in which participants would find a spouse before a television audience, and had set out the concept in a note under the title “Swayamvar”. The defendants announced a programme called “Shubh Vivah” on a similar footing. The Delhi High Court granted an injunction, holding that an idea per se has no copyright, but that when it is developed into a concept fledged with adequate detail it becomes capable of protection as a literary work, and that the law must reward those who create original work based on an idea. The Court applied the R.G. Anand principles and found that the defendants’ programme was, in its fundamental aspects, a close imitation of the plaintiff’s developed concept.
The decision has drawn criticism, and the criticism is instructive. Because it treats a “developed concept” as protectable, it risks protecting at the level of idea what R.G. Anand would deny, and the line between a developed concept and an expression of it is not self-evident. The Bombay High Court addressed the same terrain in Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Sundial Communications Pvt. Ltd., 2003 (27) PTC 457 (Bom), decided on 27 March 2003. The dispute concerned concept notes, character sketches and episodic plots for a television serial that the plaintiffs had submitted to a broadcaster. The Court accepted that the law does not recognise property rights in abstract ideas and that an idea becomes a copyright work only when it is given embodiment in tangible form, and rejected the broadcaster’s submission that the claim was merely to an idea, because the plaintiffs were relying on their written concept notes. It also recognised a second route: where an idea is communicated in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence, and the idea is clearly identifiable, original and of potential commercial attractiveness, equity may restrain its use irrespective of copyright.
That second route rests on the saving clause in Section 16 of the Copyright Act, 1957. The practical consequence is that creators of formats should not rely on copyright alone. A written concept note, circulated under a non-disclosure agreement and a clear contractual understanding on use and compensation, offers a stronger position than a copyright claim that must clear the R.G. Anand threshold.
When Idea and Expression Merge – Mattel and Emergent Genetics
The merger doctrine addresses a different problem: cases in which the idea can be expressed in only one way, or in so few ways that protecting the expression would give the claimant a monopoly over the idea. Two Delhi High Court decisions apply it in distinct fields.
In Mattel, Inc. v. Jayant Agarwalla, 2008 (38) PTC 416 (Del), decided by S. Ravindra Bhat J. on 17 September 2008, the plaintiffs sought to restrain an online word game from copying the board, rules and format of SCRABBLE. The Court held, on a prima facie view, that the copyright claim could not be granted. It reasoned that the rules of a game are abstract rules and play ideas, that the board and tiles have no intrinsic meaning apart from the rules, and that if the rules, which form the only method of expressing the underlying idea, were protected, the idea in the game would be given a monopoly, a result not intended by the legislature. The Court also found that the board design did not meet the originality standard and that protection for mass-produced articles of this kind lay under the Designs Act, 2000, by operation of Section 15(2) of the Copyright Act, 1957. The defendants were nonetheless restrained on the trade mark claim from using the name “Scrabulous”. The outcome illustrates the division of labour among the intellectual property regimes: the game as such was free for all to play, but the mark was not.
In Emergent Genetics India Pvt. Ltd. v. Shailendra Shivam, (2011) 47 PTC 494 (Del), decided on 2 August 2011, the plaintiff, a seed company, alleged that a former employee had reproduced the DNA sequences of its hybrid seeds, and contended that the sequences were literary works under Section 2(o). The Court rejected the claim. It held that a sequence obtained from nature involves no independent creation and therefore lacks originality, and that, even if some selection were assumed to be original, the idea of combining various gene components can be expressed only in limited ways, so that the expression merges with the idea and cannot be copyrighted. The Court declined to accept the analogy with computer programmes, noting that a gene sequence states a process of protein production in only one form, and observed that granting wide copyright protection would undermine the scheme of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001. The decision is a reminder that the dichotomy functions as a boundary between copyright and the sui generis and patent regimes, and not only as a rule about storytelling.
Facts, News and Machine Learning – ANI Media v. OpenAI
The most recent application of the dichotomy is in ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI OpCo LLC, in which Amit Bansal J. of the Delhi High Court delivered an order on 24 July 2026 refusing an interim injunction. ANI, a news agency, alleged that OpenAI had stored and used its articles to train the large language models behind ChatGPT, and that the outputs reproduced its works. The Court accepted that ANI owned copyright in its articles but reiterated that copyright subsists in the form, manner and arrangement of expression and not in underlying facts or news events. Relying on R.G. Anand and on the Delhi High Court’s earlier decision in Akuate Internet Services Pvt. Ltd. v. Star India Pvt. Ltd. (2013), it held that in the context of news, copyright would subsist only in the form and manner of expression and not in the underlying facts. Because news can be expressed in only a limited number of ways, the Court observed, the facts and the expression become so closely connected that the threshold for establishing infringement is higher, an application of the merger doctrine. The Court compared the expression in ANI’s reports with the expression in ChatGPT’s responses and found, prima facie, no substantial similarity. On the separate training claim, it held, prima facie, that the storage of ANI’s works for training fell within the fair dealing exception for private use, including research, in Section 52(1)(a) of the Act.
The order is an interim one, and the suit continues. Its relevance here is limited to the dichotomy: it confirms that Indian courts will resolve disputes about new technologies by returning to the same question of whose expression was taken. Commentators have noted that the ruling is fact-bound and should not be read as clearance for every use of training data. A publisher whose articles are reproduced almost verbatim in an output would stand on a very different footing from ANI on the record before the Court.
The Comparative Position – United States and European Union
The Indian approach has close counterparts abroad. Section 102(b) of the United States Copyright Act, 1976 excludes from protection any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described. The rule traces to Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1879), where the Supreme Court held that a book explaining an accounting system gave no exclusive right in the system itself, and its development into the merger doctrine, which the Delhi High Court adopted in Mattel and Emergent Genetics from American authority, is a direct borrowing. The originality standard in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) requires independent creation and a modicum of creativity, which the Indian Supreme Court examined in Modak before settling on skill and judgment. The abstraction method of Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930) is the American cousin of the R.G. Anand analysis.
In the European Union, the Court of Justice in SAS Institute Inc. v. World Programming Ltd. (Case C-406/10) held that neither the functionality of a computer programme nor the programming language and data file formats used to exploit its functions is protected by copyright, which accords with the Indian view that methods and systems lie outside copyright. In all three systems the dichotomy performs the same function: it keeps the building blocks of creativity available to everyone, and it channels functional and technical subject matter to the regimes designed for it.
Practical Implications for Advocates, Creators and Producers
Four consequences follow from the case law. The first concerns pleading. A plaintiff alleging infringement of a script or format must identify, in the plaint, the specific expressive features alleged to have been copied, such as sequence of incidents, characterisation, dialogue and treatment, and must separate them from themes, genre conventions and stock situations. A pleading that claims “uniqueness of the plot” invites the response that it claims an idea, as the Bombay High Court observed in Mansoob Haider. The second concerns evidence. Access and substantial similarity must both be shown, and the court’s own comparison of the works, which the Supreme Court undertook in R.G. Anand, will usually be decisive.
The third concerns contracts. Because copyright is weak at the level of concept, creators and producers should document the development of any format, and should not disclose it to a broadcaster or investor without a written confidentiality undertaking, so as to engage the Section 16 saving and the equitable route recognised in Zee Telefilms. The fourth concerns forum and regime. A claimant whose real interest is in a game mechanic, a technical method or a biological sequence should look to the Patents Act, 1970 or the Plant Varieties Act, 2001, and a claimant whose interest lies in a name or get-up should look to the Trade Marks Act, 1999, as the Scrabulous outcome shows.
Conclusion
The idea-expression dichotomy is not a rule of exclusion applied against creators. It is the mechanism by which Indian copyright law preserves a commons of themes, facts, methods and conventions from which all authors draw, while granting each author control over the particular way in which that commons has been shaped into a work. The Supreme Court’s decisions in R.G. Anand and Eastern Book Company supply its two axes, the first separating idea from expression and the second requiring that the expression embody skill and judgment with a modicum of creativity. The High Courts have extended it to concepts and formats, to games, to biological sequences and to news, and in each field have asked the same question in different language: what, precisely, did this author contribute that the defendant has taken?
The trajectory of the doctrine will be set by the cases that press hardest on its boundary. Concept protection in the entertainment industry remains unsettled, because the developed-concept approach in Anil Gupta sits uneasily with the stricter reading of R.G. Anand. The treatment of machine-generated outputs and training datasets will turn on how courts apply the fact-expression distinction once the interim phase of the ANI litigation gives way to trial. And the interaction of merger with the Designs Act, 2000 will continue to determine how much of functional design stays within copyright. Advocates who understand the dichotomy as a method of analysis and not as a slogan will be best placed to advise on all three.
References
- The Copyright Act, 1957, Copyright Office, Government of India – https://copyright.gov.in/Documents/Copyright_Act_1957.pdf
- The Copyright Act, 1957, WIPO Lex – https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text/128097
- Supreme Court of India, Judgments Portal – https://main.sci.gov.in
- Delhi High Court, Judgments Portal – https://delhihighcourt.nic.in
- Anil Gupta v. Kunal Dasgupta (Delhi High Court, 2002), Indian Kanoon – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1709727/
- Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Sundial Communications Pvt. Ltd. (Bombay High Court, 2003), Indian Kanoon – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/603848/
- Mattel, Inc. v. Jayant Agarwalla (Delhi High Court, 2008), Indian Kanoon – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/107853771/
- Emergent Genetics India Pvt. Ltd. v. Shailendra Shivam (Delhi High Court, 2011), Indian Kanoon – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/183763759/
- Mansoob Haider v. Yashraj Films Pvt. Ltd. (Bombay High Court, 2014), Indian Kanoon – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/123495377/
- ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI OpCo LLC (Delhi High Court, 24 July 2026), Indian Kanoon – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/93327052/
- Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), Article 9(2) – https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips.pdf
- WIPO Copyright Treaty, 1996, Article 2 – https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/
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