Copyright infringement: What’s it all about?

Three individuals combined their resources and efforts and co-authored English grammar books which were used in several known colleges as reading material for their English curriculum. The authors obtained a certificate of copyright registration for their published works.

In the course of revising their books, the co-authors went to several bookstores to check other textbooks dealing with the same subject matter. One of the books they stumbled across was an English book “strikingly similar to the contents, scheme of presentation, illustrations, and illustrative examples in their own book.” After an itemized examination and comparison of the two books, the authors found several pages similar, but more importantly, realized that their book had been copied in its entirety.