Ridhima purchased a license for a copy of a software and made additional copies without the permission of the

Question

Q. Ridhima purchased a license for a copy of a software and made additional copies without the permission of the copyright owner. This act of hers is known as ______. (A) Trademark Infringement (B) Identity Theft (C) Copyright Infringement (D) Patent

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Concept understanding — Copyright Infringement

Imagine you’ve written a poem, painted a picture, or recorded a song. It’s yours — you made it, you own it. Now suppose someone copies your poem, puts their name on it, and sells it. That feels wrong, doesn’t it? That feeling is the root of copyright infringement.

Copyright infringement is the unauthorised use of someone else’s creative work in a way that violates the exclusive rights granted to the creator by law. In simpler terms: it’s using another person’s original expression — be it a book, a film, a piece of music, a photograph, or software — without their permission, and in a manner that the law says only the creator can do.

The law gives creators a bundle of exclusive rights. These include the right to reproduce the work, distribute copies, perform it in public, display it, and create derivative works (like a movie based on a novel). When you do any of these things without the copyright owner’s consent, you are infringing.

Important

Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. You cannot copyright an idea like “a boy who discovers he’s a wizard.” But the specific words J.K. Rowling wrote in the Harry Potter books are protected. If you wrote your own story about a wizard boy using completely different characters and plot, that’s fine. If you copied paragraphs from her books, that’s infringement.

Why does this matter? Because copyright is the legal engine that makes creative industries work. A musician can spend months writing an album only if they know they’ll be paid when people buy or stream it. A filmmaker invests millions in a movie because they control who can show it. Infringement undermines that system — it takes value away from the creator and gives it to someone who did none of the work.

Common examples of infringement include:

Downloading a movie or song from an illegal website.
Photocopying an entire textbook instead of buying it.
Using a photograph from the internet on your website without the photographer’s permission.
Performing a play in your school auditorium without getting a license from the playwright.

But there are important exceptions. The most famous is fair use (or fair dealing in some countries, including India). This allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for purposes like criticism, news reporting, teaching, or research. Quoting a few lines from a novel in a book review is fair use. Republishing the entire novel is not.

Note

Fair use is decided case-by-case. Courts look at four factors: the purpose of the use (commercial vs. educational), the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount used, and the effect on the potential market for the original. There is no fixed percentage or word count that automatically makes something fair use.

For a commerce or humanities student, understanding copyright infringement is not just about avoiding lawsuits. It’s about respecting the labour of creators, understanding how intellectual property functions as an asset (like a patent or trademark), and recognising that in a knowledge economy, ideas and their expression have real economic value. When you buy a book, you own the physical object — but the words inside remain the author’s property. Infringement is theft of that property, even if it doesn’t feel like stealing a physical object.

Ridhima's act of making unauthorized copies of licensed software violates the copyright owner's exclusive right to reproduce the work, making it Copyright Infringement.

When you purchase a software license, you're buying the right to use that particular copy under specific terms—not the right to reproduce it at will. Copyright law grants the creator (or copyright holder) a bundle of exclusive rights over their original work, and one of the most fundamental is the right to control reproduction. Software, being a creative work expressed in code, falls squarely under copyright protection.

Ridhima's situation is straightforward: she bought one legitimate license but then made additional copies without permission. This directly breaches the copyright owner's exclusive reproduction right. It doesn't matter that she owns a legal copy herself; the license she purchased doesn't extend to creating duplicates for distribution or even personal use beyond what the license terms allow.

Let's quickly distinguish this from the other options to see why they don't fit:

Trademark Infringement involves unauthorized use of a brand name, logo, or other identifying mark that causes confusion about the source of goods or services. Ridhima isn't misusing the software company's brand identity; she's simply copying the product itself.
Identity Theft means fraudulently obtaining and using someone else's personal information (like Aadhaar numbers, bank details, or passwords) to impersonate them or commit fraud. Nothing in Ridhima's action involves stealing or misusing personal identity data.
Patent infringement would involve making, using, or selling an invention that's protected by a patent without the patent holder's permission. While software can sometimes be patented (particularly novel algorithms or processes), the act described here—copying an existing software product—is a reproduction issue, not an invention-use issue.

Important

Copyright protects the expression of ideas (the actual code, text, music, art), while patents protect inventions and novel processes. Unauthorized copying always falls under copyright.

The key principle is that copyright infringement occurs whenever someone violates any of the exclusive rights granted to a copyright holder—reproduction, distribution, public performance, or creation of derivative works—without authorization. Making extra copies of software is the textbook example of reproduction infringement, one of the most common forms of software piracy.

✓Final answer

Ridhima's unauthorized copying of licensed software constitutes Copyright Infringement (Option C), as it violates the copyright owner's exclusive right to reproduce the work.

Same / Similar Concept — real previous-year questions on the same or a closely similar concept, not this exact question.

CBSE 2024Set 90/1/11 markMCQ
$Q. Ridhima purchased a license for a copy of a software and made additional copies without the permission of the copyright owner. This act of hers is known as ______. (A) Trademark Infringement (B) Identity Theft (C) Copyright Infringement (D) Patent$
›Reveal solutionSolution
Ridhima's act of making unauthorized copies of licensed software violates the copyright owner's exclusive right to reproduce the work, making it Copyright Infringement.

When you purchase a software license, you're buying the right to use that particular copy under specific terms—not the right to reproduce it at will. Copyright law grants the creator (or copyright holder) a bundle of exclusive rights over their original work, and one of the most fundamental is the right to control reproduction. Software, being a creative work expressed in code, falls squarely under copyright protection.

Ridhima's situation is straightforward: she bought one legitimate license but then made additional copies without permission. This directly breaches the copyright owner's exclusive reproduction right. It doesn't matter that she owns a legal copy herself; the license she purchased doesn't extend to creating duplicates for distribution or even personal use beyond what the license terms allow.

Let's quickly distinguish this from the other options to see why they don't fit:

Trademark Infringement involves unauthorized use of a brand name, logo, or other identifying mark that causes confusion about the source of goods or services. Ridhima isn't misusing the software company's brand identity; she's simply copying the product itself.

Identity Theft means fraudulently obtaining and using someone else's personal information (like Aadhaar numbers, bank details, or passwords) to impersonate them or commit fraud. Nothing in Ridhima's action involves stealing or misusing personal identity data.

Patent infringement would involve making, using, or selling an invention that's protected by a patent without the patent holder's permission. While software can sometimes be patented (particularly novel algorithms or processes), the act described here—copying an existing software product—is a reproduction issue, not an invention-use issue.

Important

Copyright protects the expression of ideas (the actual code, text, music, art), while patents protect inventions and novel processes. Unauthorized copying always falls under copyright.

The key principle is that copyright infringement occurs whenever someone violates any of the exclusive rights granted to a copyright holder—reproduction, distribution, public performance, or creation of derivative works—without authorization. Making extra copies of software is the textbook example of reproduction infringement, one of the most common forms of software piracy.

✓Final answer
$Ridhima's unauthorized copying of licensed software constitutes Copyright Infringement (Option C), as it violates the copyright owner's exclusive right to reproduce the work.$

Q.Ridhima purchased a license for a copy of a software and made additional copies without the permission of the copyright owner. This act of hers is known as ______. (A) Trademark Infringement (B) Identity Theft (C) Copyright Infringement (D) Patent

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