“On Wednesday, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N V Ramana ruled that no one could have copyright over judgments delivered by the apex court. It could be reproduced in its raw form by anyone without the risk of being accused of infringing copyright, the bench said, settling a long-standing dispute,” reported the Times of India.

“The question before the bench was whether the Lucknow bench of Allahabad high court was correct in restraining Reed Elsevier India Pvt Ltd from reproducing judgments reported in ‘Supreme Court Cases’ (SCC) published by Eastern Book Company,” according to TOI.

Khimani & Associates partner Priyanka Khimani briefed senior counsel Pratibha Singh for Lexis Nexis.

Advocate on record Anitha Shenoy briefed senior advocate KV Vishwanathan for EBC India.

EBC, which is the publisher of Supreme Court Cases (SCC), was granted an interim injunction in the Lucknow district court against Reed Elsevier India, which owns legal case database providers Lexis Nexis and Butterworths, as well as Thomson Reuters, which publishes Westlaw and Indlaw.

Lexis Nexis later that year obtained an injunction in the Lucknow District Court against EBC to prevent it from publicising that it was granted an interim injunction in the same court last month against Lexis Nexis for alleged plagiarism.