to various doctrines/tests that can be helpful in determining whether a work meets the threshold of originality. The most prominent case with respect to 'originality' under the Indian Copyright Law is the Eastern Book Company v DCB Modak. This judgment gave rise to two doctrines i.e. modicum of creativity and the skill and judgment test. This remains the accepted and current position of law in India as of now. However, prior to this, the Indian Courts used to follow the Sweat of the Brow approach. Sweat of the Brow theory This theory bases the grant of copyright protection on the effort and labour that an author puts into his or her work as opposed to the creativity involved. Locke's theory of labour as property has often been extended to give jurisprudential basis to this theory of copyright law. In the case of V. Govindan v E.M. Gopalakrishna Kone, it was held that compilations of information would meet the threshold of 'originality' under the Indian Copyright Act since it involves some level of 'skill, labour and brain'. A similar line of reasoning was adopted in the case of Burlington Home Shipping Pvt Ltd v Rajnish Chibber where a database was held to be original enough to be protected by copyright under Indian law. Like in other jurisdictions, however, this theory was discarded by the Indian Courts also and the focus was shifted to the creativity involved in any work. EBC Modak Case (Modicum of Creativity & Skill and Judgment Test) The EBC Modak case is the Indian counterpart of the Feist Publications case in terms of the test it laid down. It concerned the copyrightability of Supreme Court judgments that were copy-edited and published by Eastern Book Company. These judgments were published along with 'headnotes' that were written by the Company itself. While explicitly discarding the Sweat of the Brow theory, the Court held that simply copy editing would not meet the threshold of originality under copyright law since it would only demonstrate an "amount of skill, labour and capital put in the inputs of the copy-edited judgments and the original or innovative thoughts for the creativity would be completely excluded.". Thus, it introduced the requirement of 'creativity' under originality. With respect to the level of creativity involved, the court adopted the 'minimal degree of creativity' approach. Following this standard, the headnotes that did not copy from the judgment verbatim were