Are Summaries of copyrighted books infringe the rights of the copyright holder?
Last Updated on April 20, 2025 by Athi Venkatesh
Introduction:
In a time driven by the symphony of multitasking, audiobooks have become the harmonious partner to the rhythms of everyday life. They are weaving stories through sound waves that resonate with an ever-expanding audience, and their burgeoning popularity represents a paradigm shift in the consumption of literature. As technology makes things more easily accessible, audiobooks enable tale immersion during regular workouts, errands, or commutes, adding narrative magic to otherwise narratively empty periods.
Their storytelling is elegant, which adds to their appeal in addition to their ease of use. A gifted voice actor can bring characters to life with inflection, emotion, and depth that goes beyond the written word to produce a captivating auditory experience.
Audio have been a popular medium of consumption of books. Initially around the late 2000’s, books were read, recorded and was burned in discs for comfortably finishing the books and at the leisure of multi-tasking it. The audio books industry have heavily incentivised itself with platforms like Spotify, Amazon music, Apple music, online radio stations, Kuku FM, Pocket FM and etc.
Theses platforms have various audiobooks, exerts from the audio book, summaries and reviews in these platforms. The issue of whether audio summaries infringe the exclusive rights of a copyright owner is an integral question that arose in the case of Pocket FM v/s Kuku FM where Kuku FM provides audio book summary of books which copyrights are owned by Pocket FM.
Keywords : audiobooks, summaries, copyrighted work, replacement, adaptation, abridgement.
Issues in hand regarding the case:
Pocket FM had copyrights of highly grossed books like Rich dad, Poor Dad, Think like a monk, Eat that frog and etc. These copyrighted book’s summaries were available in the Kuku FM’s platform. Pocket FM alleged that the copyrights of the books belongs to Pocket FM and it is an infringement to have summaries of those books claiming upto 2 crores as damages, Kuku FM however refused the allegation of impugned work, claiming that the work was an interpretation of their own and claimed exception under the copyrights act, section 52, fair use. The imperative question to answer is that whether summarising of the audio books would fall under fair use or adaptation of original work, in which case, summary infringing the copyrighted work.
E.M. Forster and Ors. vs. A.N. Parasuram
Early during the years of 1957, the madras high court earlier had a similar case that was referred by Kuku FM. This case was shortly before the Copyrights act was enforced. Parasuram had made summary of a book authored by forster. This was not the only work of Parasuram, he already had published the summary and cliff notes of Hamlet which belonged to the public domain thus facing no infringement of copyright. Forster and his publishers sued Parasuram for infringement of copyrights. However Parasuram claimed fair use exception as he had put his own mind and intellect in analysing the book to summarise the book. The court, then felt that Parasuram had not infringed the copyright for 2 reasons.
- The summarised version is not a replacement to the original book.
- The summarised version had intent of helping the university students pervading the need to replace the book of Forster.
Proceedings of the case:-
Although the court did not find the work of Parasuram infringing the original book, the copyright laws have been updated and amended. Interpretation of following sections from the copyrights act
S (2) (iii), S (51), S 14.(a), suggests that abridged version of the book’s right still lies within the ambits of the copyright holder. The court ruled against Kuku FM and Kuku FM had to take down the impugned summaries but Kuku FM and Pocket FM had come to a settlement regarding the amount sued.
Earlier Pocket FM demanded about 2 crores for the infringement but they settled not to sue for money and Kuku had to take down the impugned books and Kuku Fm had to rescind the case against Pocket FM for copyright infringement of the book regarding the Israeli intelligence team, the Mossad.
Kuku FM had failed to produce a work within the ambits of fair use, as the summary version had usage of same keywords and anecdotes of the original version of the book thus failing or lacking in usage of one’s own intellect. The court found the same in the case, lack of usage of own intellect to claim it as fair use.
Conclusion:-
Nevertheless, copyright issues have proven to be complex on a global scale. However, the Pocket FM v. Kuku FM case highlights the gray area in these situations, wherein the licensed or copyrighted materials could be published using a long synopsis or summary. Big Tech is working hard to find a solution to the copyright violation issue, even if this particular scenario is rather specific to the Indian audio streaming market. There was a very crucial statement that arose in the judgement regarding the selective suing of the opposition to curb the competition, for which the court stated that it is the right of the one who suffered loss to sue and cannot be taken as a valid argument to dispose the case off. The need to have copyright laws interpreted in a manner that makes the law clear would reduce the stress of the court. Such cases act as stare decisis and reduce confusions that may arise in the future.
Athi Venkatesh AVD
