Madras High Court restrains infringement of ‘mobile ringtones’

In yet another high-profile ringtone dispute, the Madras High Court on the 28th of July, 2011 has granted ex-parte interim injunctions to Five Star Audio & Star Music, restraining Suriya Movies, MG Movie Productions and AS Combine from using or making any claims to the ownership in the sound-recordings and underlying musical and literary works of the films ‘Khushi’, Dhool’, ‘Ghilli’, ‘7/G Rainbow Colony’ and ‘Boys’. The order is available over here.

Apparently the cause of the litigation is a misunderstanding of the order passed by the Delhi High Court in the Sholay dispute which we have blogged about over here. Thiru Ananth Padmanabhan, the advocate representing the Plaintiffs in this case explains “The Sholay litigation has led to an unintended effect with certain producers who had assigned their entire rights in a sound recording to the sound recording label, acting under the misconceived notion that even they would still retain some rights. Mr. A.M.Rathnam, a successful producer from the Tollywood industry (recollect “Telephone dhun pe hasnewali”), in a misadventure of sorts, licensed the “digital mobile rights” to MG Movie Production Pvt Ltd for six of his films, ignoring that all six were assigned 11 to 7 years back to different labels for hefty lumpsum consideration. The license agreement was primarily to make some money from the “telephone dhun” (pun intended) on the assumption that Ringtones and Ringback Tones were not covered in the earlier assignment deeds with the sound recording labels.”

As explained in the Delhi High Court order, the ‘Sholay’ dispute was based on a licensing agreement entered into between Sholay and Universal back in 1978 which required the latter to pass on 10% of the royalties to the former. The present dispute however involves an assignment deed wherein Defendant-producers had assigned away all their rights to the Plaintiffs. Moreover the argument that Sholay is making of not being aware of ‘ringtones’ in 1978 does not apply in the present case since the defendant producers had assigned away their rights in the last decade when everyone was aware of ‘ringtones’ as a revenue generator.

The next hearing of the case is on the 18th of August, 2011.