The Delhi High Court issued a notice to People of India (PoI), a storytelling platform, after hearing a plea by Humans of Bombay (HoB), a popular storytelling organisation, accusing PoI of copyright infringement. As per the court order, HoB said PoI replicated and used HoB’s business model, images and videos and focused on the same issues as HoB. What is Humans of Bombay? Here is a short description of HoB by ChatGPT: “Humans of Bombay is a popular social media project and storytelling platform that originated in Mumbai, India. The project is inspired by the well-known "Humans of New York" [HONY] and aims to capture the diverse and inspiring stories of the people who live in Mumbai. It was founded by photographer Karishma Mehta.” Why it matters: While copyright of media content like photos and videos seems like a fairly straight-forward case, HoB is also known as an organisation based off of HONY. It raises questions about what aspect of the business model lies in HoB’s ownership – and as pointed out by some experts later on, this argument can be extended to specified content as well. For this reason, regardless of what conclusion is drawn from this case, it is useful to follow the same to understand copyright laws in India. Court send notice for substantial imitation: As per the court order, HoB seeks an “injunction restraining infringement of copyright of its copyrighted content,” against PoI. This includes HoB’s content, literary works, materials, films and creative expressions which is…
