Case Name: Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. & LNG Express India Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd. & Ors.
Citation: 2025 INSC 483, decided on 15 April 2025
Forum: Supreme Court of India (Civil Appellate Jurisdiction)
Coram: Justice Surya Kant and Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh
Abstract
This comment analyzes the Supreme Court’s decision in this case and explores the delicate line that the Court has often walked between copyright protection for artworks and design protection for articles created through an industrial process. The Court handed down a two-part test in the case of adjudication of dispute concerning engineering drawings for LNG semi-trailers to determine the circumstances under which Section 15(2) of the Copyright Act, 1957 abolishes the copyright in favour of the Designs Act, 2000. The comment claims that the test is doctrinally welcome, but it also creates a high standard for proof in the pleading phase and practical issues of proof remain.
Introduction
The ability to be creative and functional has always been an issue with Indian law, as well. An artistic work can become a drawing the instant it is drawn on paper, while the subject of the drawing can be an industrial design the moment it enters into mass production. This conflict is dealt with rudely in section 15(2) of the Copyright Act: If a design which qualifies for protection under the Designs Act is applied to an article and more than fifty copies of that article are made by means of an industrial process, then copyright is lost once it has been applied. The Supreme Court had for the first time a chance to elaborate on how this threshold is to be located in the first instance, instead of assuming it at the pleading stage, in Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd.
Facts and Issues
In 2018, Inox India Ltd. filed a lawsuit against Cryogas Equipment and LNG Express India in the Commercial Court in Vadodara, claiming infringement of two different works: Proprietary Engineering Drawings for LNG semi-trailers and Literary Works detailing the manufacturing process. The defendants asked for the drawings to be rejected under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure alleging that the drawings were “designs” under Section 2(d) of the Designs Act, and that copyright had already expired under Section 15(2) of the Designs Act, because the drawings had been industrially reproduced in large quantities beyond fifty units without registering the design. The Commercial Court accepted this and dismissed the suit at the threshold but it was overturned by Gujarat High Court which set aside the order and reinstated the plaint. On further appeal, the Supreme Court was required to determine whether the drawings were designs and/or works of art, to interpret the meaning of Section 15(2), and to determine whether this determination could be made at a trial.
Statutory Framework
This exemption removes copyright protection from artistic works which are registered as designs. Section 15(2) takes it one step further: Copyright is denied to unregistered works of art, when they are used in an article and are reproduced industrially beyond the limits of the statute. The purpose of this is to stop creators from exploiting the longer “formality-free” copyright term to avoid the shorter “registration-based” monopoly design law imposes on mass-produced articles. Previous cases involving this overlap had considered individual aspects of the overlap, such as Microfibres Inc. v. Girdhar & Co., Bharat Glass Tube Ltd. v. Gopal Glass Works Ltd. and Dart Industries Inc. v. Techno Plast and Mattel Inc. v. Jayant Agarwalla.
The Court’s Reasoning
The Court considered the two statutes as not being strictly mutually exclusive, and found that an article could not automatically be deemed ineligible for artistic protection because it was not artistic, and vice versa. Instead, it put forward two questions: one, is the work an “artistic” work, or “a design based on an artistic work and made through an industrial process?; and two, does the article’s “essential purpose” represent an aesthetic purpose or a functional purpose? The Court applied the principle to the facts, and determined that the Literary Works were descriptive process narrations which were never subject to the Section 15(2) limitation. It also found that the engineering drawings themselves also fell within the fifty-reproduction threshold and this was a mixed question of law and fact which could not be determined from Inox’s own pleadings, as it only pleaded revenue figures, not the number of units. The Gujarat High Court allowed the suit, and the question could not be decided on the ground of a mere reading of the plaint and hence the rejection was not appropriate.
Analysis and Impact
The main thing the judgment does is to say that a blanket presumption that everything that is not copyright is automatically design protection is wrong. The Court’s reading of the functional, utilitarian inquiry and artistic-work threshold leaves a space for hybrid works e.g., technical drawings with their own artistic qualifications are to be evaluated separately from their function in mass production. It also puts weight on the pleadings: while the plaintiff can no longer simply avoid providing unit-level reproduction data, the defendant must do so as well. The judgement marks a policy shift for engineering sectors that rely on engineering drawings and documentation, for industries that make cryogenic equipment, or for those within the automotive sector, to name a few, where registration of design is the safer choice when scale-up or mass production of the product is considered.
Conclusion
I believe that the Supreme Court has not succumbed to a bright-line presumption, in my opinion this is the real strength of the decision. The two-pronged test is not intended to waive the copyright-design overlap but requires that it be litigated and not taken for granted at the threshold. This is doctrinally correct but financially expensive because commercial parties will now have to undergo more rigorous trials not only to be excluded from access to the information under Section 15(2), but also to deny access. The judgment should be viewed not as a final ruling, but as a corrective step to get the copyright-design boundary back to the arena of evidence, not pleading.
REFERENCES
Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. & Anr. v. Inox India Ltd. & Ors., 2025 INSC 483 (15 April 2025).
The Copyright Act, 1957, No. 14, Acts of Parliament, 1957 (India), s. 15.
The Designs Act, 2000, No. 16, Acts of Parliament, 2000 (India), s. 2(d).
The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, No. 5, Acts of Parliament, 1908 (India), Order VII Rule 11.
Aditya Bhargava, Cryogas Judgment: Supreme Court Stops Copyright from ‘Gaslighting’ Design, SpicyIP (18 April 2025).
Riya Rathore, Copyright v. Design Protection: Supreme Court Formulates Two-Pronged Approach to Address the Conundrum by Section 15(2) Copyright Act, Verdictum (15 April 2025).
Supreme Court Settles the Law on Interplay Between Copyright and Design, Lexology (17 April 2025).
Design vs. Copyright: SC’s Cryogas Judgment Creates Definitive Twin Test, Mondaq (2025).
Microfibres Inc. v. Girdhar & Co., 2009 SCC OnLine Del 1647.
Bharat Glass Tube Ltd. v. Gopal Glass Works Ltd., (2008) 10 SCC 657.
Mattel Inc. v. Jayant Agarwalla, 2008 SCC OnLine Del 1494.
Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. & LNG Express India Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd. & Ors.
Tanvi Patibandla
Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University
Case Name: Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. & LNG Express India Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd. & Ors.
Citation: 2025 INSC 483, decided on 15 April 2025
Forum: Supreme Court of India (Civil Appellate Jurisdiction)
Coram: Justice Surya Kant and Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh
Abstract
This comment analyzes the Supreme Court’s decision in this case and explores the delicate line that the Court has often walked between copyright protection for artworks and design protection for articles created through an industrial process. The Court handed down a two-part test in the case of adjudication of dispute concerning engineering drawings for LNG semi-trailers to determine the circumstances under which Section 15(2) of the Copyright Act, 1957 abolishes the copyright in favour of the Designs Act, 2000. The comment claims that the test is doctrinally welcome, but it also creates a high standard for proof in the pleading phase and practical issues of proof remain.
Introduction
The ability to be creative and functional has always been an issue with Indian law, as well. An artistic work can become a drawing the instant it is drawn on paper, while the subject of the drawing can be an industrial design the moment it enters into mass production. This conflict is dealt with rudely in section 15(2) of the Copyright Act: If a design which qualifies for protection under the Designs Act is applied to an article and more than fifty copies of that article are made by means of an industrial process, then copyright is lost once it has been applied. The Supreme Court had for the first time a chance to elaborate on how this threshold is to be located in the first instance, instead of assuming it at the pleading stage, in Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd.
Facts and Issues
In 2018, Inox India Ltd. filed a lawsuit against Cryogas Equipment and LNG Express India in the Commercial Court in Vadodara, claiming infringement of two different works: Proprietary Engineering Drawings for LNG semi-trailers and Literary Works detailing the manufacturing process. The defendants asked for the drawings to be rejected under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure alleging that the drawings were “designs” under Section 2(d) of the Designs Act, and that copyright had already expired under Section 15(2) of the Designs Act, because the drawings had been industrially reproduced in large quantities beyond fifty units without registering the design. The Commercial Court accepted this and dismissed the suit at the threshold but it was overturned by Gujarat High Court which set aside the order and reinstated the plaint. On further appeal, the Supreme Court was required to determine whether the drawings were designs and/or works of art, to interpret the meaning of Section 15(2), and to determine whether this determination could be made at a trial.
Statutory Framework
This exemption removes copyright protection from artistic works which are registered as designs. Section 15(2) takes it one step further: Copyright is denied to unregistered works of art, when they are used in an article and are reproduced industrially beyond the limits of the statute. The purpose of this is to stop creators from exploiting the longer “formality-free” copyright term to avoid the shorter “registration-based” monopoly design law imposes on mass-produced articles. Previous cases involving this overlap had considered individual aspects of the overlap, such as Microfibres Inc. v. Girdhar & Co., Bharat Glass Tube Ltd. v. Gopal Glass Works Ltd. and Dart Industries Inc. v. Techno Plast and Mattel Inc. v. Jayant Agarwalla.
The Court’s Reasoning
The Court considered the two statutes as not being strictly mutually exclusive, and found that an article could not automatically be deemed ineligible for artistic protection because it was not artistic, and vice versa. Instead, it put forward two questions: one, is the work an “artistic” work, or “a design based on an artistic work and made through an industrial process?; and two, does the article’s “essential purpose” represent an aesthetic purpose or a functional purpose? The Court applied the principle to the facts, and determined that the Literary Works were descriptive process narrations which were never subject to the Section 15(2) limitation. It also found that the engineering drawings themselves also fell within the fifty-reproduction threshold and this was a mixed question of law and fact which could not be determined from Inox’s own pleadings, as it only pleaded revenue figures, not the number of units. The Gujarat High Court allowed the suit, and the question could not be decided on the ground of a mere reading of the plaint and hence the rejection was not appropriate.
Analysis and Impact
The main thing the judgment does is to say that a blanket presumption that everything that is not copyright is automatically design protection is wrong. The Court’s reading of the functional, utilitarian inquiry and artistic-work threshold leaves a space for hybrid works e.g., technical drawings with their own artistic qualifications are to be evaluated separately from their function in mass production. It also puts weight on the pleadings: while the plaintiff can no longer simply avoid providing unit-level reproduction data, the defendant must do so as well. The judgement marks a policy shift for engineering sectors that rely on engineering drawings and documentation, for industries that make cryogenic equipment, or for those within the automotive sector, to name a few, where registration of design is the safer choice when scale-up or mass production of the product is considered.
Conclusion
I believe that the Supreme Court has not succumbed to a bright-line presumption, in my opinion this is the real strength of the decision. The two-pronged test is not intended to waive the copyright-design overlap but requires that it be litigated and not taken for granted at the threshold. This is doctrinally correct but financially expensive because commercial parties will now have to undergo more rigorous trials not only to be excluded from access to the information under Section 15(2), but also to deny access. The judgment should be viewed not as a final ruling, but as a corrective step to get the copyright-design boundary back to the arena of evidence, not pleading.
REFERENCES
Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. & Anr. v. Inox India Ltd. & Ors., 2025 INSC 483 (15 April 2025).
The Copyright Act, 1957, No. 14, Acts of Parliament, 1957 (India), s. 15.
The Designs Act, 2000, No. 16, Acts of Parliament, 2000 (India), s. 2(d).
The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, No. 5, Acts of Parliament, 1908 (India), Order VII Rule 11.
Aditya Bhargava, Cryogas Judgment: Supreme Court Stops Copyright from ‘Gaslighting’ Design, SpicyIP (18 April 2025).
Riya Rathore, Copyright v. Design Protection: Supreme Court Formulates Two-Pronged Approach to Address the Conundrum by Section 15(2) Copyright Act, Verdictum (15 April 2025).
Supreme Court Settles the Law on Interplay Between Copyright and Design, Lexology (17 April 2025).
Design vs. Copyright: SC’s Cryogas Judgment Creates Definitive Twin Test, Mondaq (2025).
Microfibres Inc. v. Girdhar & Co., 2009 SCC OnLine Del 1647.
Bharat Glass Tube Ltd. v. Gopal Glass Works Ltd., (2008) 10 SCC 657.
Mattel Inc. v. Jayant Agarwalla, 2008 SCC OnLine Del 1494.
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