Shah Rukh Khan’s latest film venture, RA.One, an expensive affair to begin with, just got costlier by Rs. One crore, for a potential intellectual property rights violation.
This isn’t the first time the release of an expected Bollywood blockbuster has been hindered by the prospect of having violated provisions of the Indian Copyright Act. Interestingly in this case, the court did not not stay the release of the film, but rather asked SRK’s company, Red Chillies Entertainment to deposit Rs. One crore in the registry, failing which it would stay the release of the film, which is scheduled to release this coming Wednesday.
The claim originated from a petition filed by Yash Patnaik, a television writer and producer, who had been in talks with Mushtaq Sheikh, the script-writer for RA.One and had also registered the concept of a futuristic superhero called ‘One’ with the Film Writer’s Association, several years ago. It was argued that Sheikh used the concept discussed with him and sold the idea to Shah Rukh Khan’s production house, without giving due credit to Patnaik. On the issue of whether this was a ploy by Patnaik to extract money from the producers, since he waited till the time of release to make his claim, it was contended that he had held back on instituting a suit, in order to collect sufficient audio-visual evidence to back up his claim.
The Division Bench of the Bombay High Court, consisting of Justices Mohit Shah and Roshan Dalvi heard the matter and concluded that ‘“Prima facie, the first plaintiff (Patnaik) has copyright in the concept, including the material, graphic illustrations and drawings, monograms and scenes and pictures of the flying robots in the gadgets,”. The appeared to have upheld the contention that the character in RA.One resembled Pattanaik’s concept of a superhero in the future, in ‘attributes and appearance’. However, they did not give a final ruling on the issue of copyright infringement but were committed to hearing the matter soon.
The order dated 21st October has not been uploaded on the Bombay High Court website yet (only orders till the 17th of October are available). We will do a more detailed post on the merits of the claim and the reasoning for the order once it is made available.
“Thou Shalt Not Steal” has been an admonition followed since the dawn of civilization.Unfortunately in the modern world of business this admonition is not always followed.Indeed, the defendants in this action for copyright infringement would have this court believe that stealing is rampant in the music business, and for that reasons, their conduct herein, however violates not only 7th Commandant but also the Copyright Laws of this country.”- Judge Kevin Duff’s opinion in Grad Upright Music Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records, Inc., 780 F. Supp. 182,183 (S.D.N.Y.1991)
We are eagerly waiting the final outcome of present appeal which was heard by the Division Bench of Hon’ble Bombay High Court in APPST/695/2011(YASH PATNAIK AND BEYOND DREAMS ENTERTAINMENT PVT. LTD.V/S RED CHILLIES ENTERTAI NMENT PVT. LTD. AND 5 ORS. However, it appears from the various news reports/blog postings/web-links Hon’ble Judges had prima-facie found copyright violation committed by a Bollywood Big Banner while passing conditional film release order as an interim arrangement. I still reserve my comment on the merit of the case as we are yet to go through the detailed order passed on 21st October,2011.
S.K.MOHANTY
Advocate
LEGAL SHEBANG
LGF- 6/33-33A ,Vikram Vihar,
Lajpat Nagar-IV, New Delhi-1100024
Phones: 011-46516845 /46516846
Cell:09818236472
E-mail: [email protected]
See guys this is a superhero movie and every superhero movie has same story.Hero beats villain.But you should admire srk work towards bollywood.He is taking bollywood to a new way and making them believe that in India we can also make superhero films.Hollywood has make 5-6 superhero films that why they are unbeatable at this.But Srk effort isn’t that bad..Srk you are heartbeat of million of people in India we are always with you.and som of you saying it bakwaas,flop how can you say this when you actually had not seen this.
abey…give us the link to the order yaar