Protection Of Literary Characters

Article by Martand Nemana & Rahul Gupta*

INTRODUCTION

The information age has made traditional IP protection for literary characters inadequate. Creators now find their characters dominating the cultural space as never before, faced with the challenge of protecting their work from infringement and controlling the depiction of their creations, the regular copy right regime seems inadequate to give these creators their due. This lacuna is partly filled by the expansion of trademark law and as a subset of that, the common law remedy of passing off.

This note will deal with a few distinct questions in the context of the IP regime in India. The first, whether a copyright can subsist in character by itself, outside the bounds of the form it's depicted, the answer to which and second, what is the extent of the protection one can expect when faced with a third-party's unlawful depiction of a character. And finally a proposed way forward.