Lawyers told to upgrade knowledge

MANGALORE: Chief Justice of State High Court M K Jain on Saturday urged the lawyers to get themselves trained to handle specialised fields emerging in the changing scenario.
He was speaking after inaugurating Copy Right Law, organised by SDM Law College and sponsored by Ministry of HRD.
Justice Jain observed that for implementation of the provisions of the Copy Right Act, infrastructure including highly qualified investigative machinery of expertise is required.
"Therefore efficient lawyers specialised in the field. If Indian lawyers lag behind in the matter, the consequence would be the import of specially trained legal brains from abroad, which is not be beneficial to our nation," he said adding that it is, therefore, necessary that the concerned keep pace with the time and equip with the changing scenario.
The justice pointed out that Copyright law protects only the expression of the idea of the holder of the copyright and not the idea as such. "In India, computer software falls under copyright law and therefore, only the expression of the idea behind the software can be protected."
He further noted that the philosophy of the internet is freedom of information and on the other hand, intellectual property protection is meant to give a monopolistic protection to the authors of the work. "The conflict is between these two ideologies," he added.
Jain opined that considering the extent to which computer programmes and communications software are growing - both in size and economic value, the nature of protection to be provided becomes important. Software is easily reproducible and can be copied cheaply.
But, he noted while the copyright does not effectively prevent copiers from making few copies, as detection and enforcement is enormous, it does inhibit competing firms from reproducing works on a mass scale.
He said the subjects to be dealt with in the seminar are very important, wide ranging, fast developing and of great practical relevance. "Even in Courts also, we come across these subjects rarely and the workshop gives the unique opportunity to know more about the topics like emerging Copyright issues, information Technology and Law, Neighbouring Rights and Copyrights Enforcement, Digital Technology and Software and Copyright Piracy and the law.
Justice P Vishwanath Shetty, judge, state high court, presided over the function. Prof S Prabhakar, secretary, SDM Education Trust, was the chief guest.
The valedictory function was also held on the same day in which IGP Dharam Pal Negi and K Sundar Naik, registrar, Mangalore University, were be the chief guests.