Courts place non-statutory limitations on intellectual property, as opposed to statutory enforcement of rights.
Ruth L. Okediji 6. [Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School. “The International Copyright System: Limitations, Exceptions and Public Interest Considerations, for Developing Countries.” UNCTAD - ICTSD Project on IPRs and Sustainable Development. May 2006. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=3ba023b93da9cf41c38111af5e9c9939652eb8c1]//dawn
6.1.5 Apply enforcement efforts both to infringement of copyright and to violations of limitations and exceptions.
While penalties for intellectual property infringement are mandatory under the TRIPS Agreement, and most developing countries have implemented in their domestic laws such penalties, including criminal penalties, it is unheard of in most developing countries to penalize a copyright owner who asserts a copyright claim that exceeds the scope of the right, or that clearly violates a limitation or exception. In some developed countries, courts have recognized a doctrine of “copyright misuse,” where a copyright owner who abuses the copyright privilege is precluded from enforcing the copyright until the abusive conduct has been stopped.168 Developing countries may lack the strong judicial systems to create and apply such non-statutory limits on a copyright owner, but they do have administrative agencies that could devise simple rules to ensure that enforcement efforts apply to both the rights and the limitations on copyright.