Physical Copy Doctrine Versus The "Substantiality" Dictum

When it comes to the issue of copyright infringement of cinematograph films, there exist two schools of thought. One school believes that as far as cinematograph films are concerned, Section 14(1)(d) of the Copyright Act only protects the exact carbon copy of the work and not the contents in it. They argue that in lieu of Section 13(4) of the Act, the rights to the different contents of the film rests separately with the respective authors such as the music director, screenplay writers etc. Section 14(1)(d) only gives the owner (producer) of a cinematograph film copyright protection to the exact "copy" of the work. This theory that they propagate is sometimes referred to as the "Physical Copy Doctrine". The other school believes in a more broad reading of Section 14. According to them, a cinematograph film is more than a compilation of its underlying works. This school of thought believes that there is a creative authorship that goes into the making of a cinematograph