In Sreedevi Video Corporation v. SaReGaMa India Ltd., the Madras High Court took the unusual step of allowing an injunction claim to proceed even after holding the plaintiff’s claim to copyright ownership as time-barred. The Supreme Court has since stayed this ruling, signalling concerns with this separation of remedies. Shubham Thakare examines whether an injunction can truly survive a limitation bar on ownership, and the broader implications for copyright disputes under the Copyright Act and limitation law. Shubham is a third-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, with an interest in copyright and trademark law.
The Madras High Court’s Injunction in Sreedevi v. SaReGaMa: Was the Supreme Court Right to Stay It?
By Shubham Thakare
Last year, in Sreedevi Video Corporation v. SaReGaMa India Ltd., a Division Bench of the Madras High Court held that Sreedevi’s claim for declaration of copyright ownership was barred by limitation, but nevertheless allowed its claim for permanent injunction to proceed. This was unusual since the Court declined to determine who owned the copyright but permitted a suit seeking to restrain its alleged infringement. The Supreme Court has since stayed the operation of this order, signalling its prima facie concerns with the High Court’s approach.
The dispute concerned the ownership over the audio rights of seven South Indian films. The plaintiff Sreedevi Video relied on assignment agreements executed in 2008, whereas the Defendant SaReGaMa claimed earlier assignments from 1978 and 1979. On 6 August 2010, SaReGaMa issued a cease-and-desist notice denying Sreedevi’s title. However, Sreedevi filed its suit only in May 2014, nearly four years later, seeking a declaration of copyright ownership and an injunction on SaReGaMa’s exploitation of the audio rights in the films. The Single Judge dismissed the suit entirely. He held that once Sreedevi’s claim to be legally recognised as the owner of the copyright was barred by limitation, since the suit had been filed beyond the three-year period prescribed under Article 58 of the Limitation Act, it could not separately seek to injunct SaReGaMa from using the works. The Division Bench partly disagreed with the single judge, and allowed Sreedevi to continue its claim to restrain SaReGaMa’s use of the works even though its ownership claim was time-barred.
While the Supreme Court has now granted an interim stay on the division bench’s order, it has not yet examined the merits of the dispute. This post, therefore, looks at the High Court’s reasoning to consider whether the stay appears justified. In doing so, I focus on two aspects of the judgment which, in my view, are central to the court’s reasoning: first, whether a plea for injunction can survive once the claim to declare copyright ownership is itself barred by limitation; and second, whether continuing exploitation of the work creates recurring causes of action that effectively sidestep the limitation bar on the underlying title dispute.
Injunction as an “Independent” Relief
The Division Bench allowed the injunction claim to continue even though it held that Sreedevi’s request to be formally declared as the owner was filed beyond the limitation period. It relied on the principle that limitation only defeats the remedy of declaration as an owner, not the underlying right of ownership itself. On that basis, it treated the injunction as an “independent” relief that could still proceed based on an existing right of Sreedevi over the copyright even without a formal declaration of ownership. This raises a very patent difficulty. Section 55 of the Copyright Act grants remedies specifically to the “owner” of the copyright. Where ownership of copyright is in dispute, but a party cannot obtain a declaration of ownership because the claim is barred by limitation, its ability to seek remedies that depend on that ownership becomes doubtful.
The division bench attempted to distinguish the Supreme Court’s ruling in Padhiyar Prahladji Chenaji. In Padhiyar, the Court held that once a suit for declaration of title is dismissed as time-barred, the prayer for permanent injunction cannot survive because it is consequential to that declaration (¶13). The division bench attempted to get around this by stating that Sreedevi, in the present case, had framed the injunction as a “substantive” and “independent” relief and had paid separate court fees under Section 27(c) of the Tamil Nadu Court Fees Act. That explanation is difficult to accept. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that courts must look at the substance of the claim rather than the way it is drafted. In RBANMS Educational Institution, the Court warned against allowing “clever drafting” or “camouflage” in the plaint to change the true nature of the relief sought (¶ 14.1). If ownership itself is disputed and the claim to declare that ownership is barred, the injunction cannot realistically stand on its own.
To get over the above objection, the division bench suggested that the Court can incidentally examine questions of title while determining whether an injunction relief should be granted. However, this approach cannot be convincingly applied to the present case. The dispute between the parties was fundamentally about who owned the copyright in the audio works rather than about whether the defendant’s conduct interfered with an undisputed right. The Supreme Court in Anathula Sudhakar clarified that while courts may incidentally consider title in injunction suits, this is appropriate only where title is not seriously in dispute. Where ownership itself is contested, the proper remedy is a suit for declaration with consequential relief (¶11.3 & 17). Allowing the court to determine ownership incidentally within the injunction claim risks collapsing this distinction and effectively permits a time-barred declaratory dispute to be adjudicated indirectly.
The Misnomer of the ‘Continuing Wrong’
The second significant pillar of the division bench’s reasoning was the idea of recurring causes of action. While the court did not use this terminology expressly, it reasoned that a claim seeking a declaration of ownership is governed by Article 58 of the First Schedule to the Limitation Act, which requires such claims to be filed within three years from when the right to sue first arises. In contrast, a claim for injunction falls under Article 113 of the First Schedule, which prescribes a three-year limitation period from when the right to sue accrues, without using the word “first”. Under this article, the limitation period restarts on each successive violation. On this distinction, the court treated each act of exploitation of Sreedevi’s copyright by SaReGaMa as giving rise to a fresh right to sue for the purposes of the injunction claim, even though the claim for declaration of ownership was tied to the initial denial in 2010.
However, this reasoning sits uneasily with (and perhaps sidesteps) the purpose of Article 58. That provision uses the word “first” to indicate that the limitation period begins when the right to sue for declaration first accrues and not anytime later. In Khatri Hotels P. Ltd., the Supreme Court explained that this phrasing in Article 58 was designed to prevent the limitation clock from restarting with each successive violation (¶27). In this case, the right to challenge SaReGaMa’s assertion of ownership clearly arose in August 2010. By holding that the injunction claim could continue because the right to sue arises each time the music is played, the division bench effectively sidesteps the consequence of Sreedevi’s failure to challenge the denial of ownership within three years. The result is that the dispute over ownership, which Article 58 seeks to bring to an end after a fixed period, reappears through the injunction claim, potentially indefinitely.
A counterargument against my position here might be that the division bench’s reasoning resembles the approach taken in intellectual property infringement cases such as M/S Bengal Waterproof Ltd., where the Supreme Court held that each act of passing off constitutes a fresh cause of action. But that analogy does not fit easily here. In Bengal Waterproof, the plaintiff’s ownership of the trademark was not itself disputed and hence not time-barred. The dispute concerned repeated acts of passing off. In the present case, ownership itself is contested. If Sreedevi is barred under Article 58 from obtaining a declaration that it is the owner of the copyright, it becomes difficult to say that each act of exploitation by the defendant amounts to a fresh legal wrong against Sridevi.
Conclusion
The Madras High Court’s judgment therefore, raises difficult questions about the relationship between limitation, ownership disputes, and infringement remedies in copyright law. The Supreme Court’s decision to stay the judgment appears to reflect the concern that the 2010 denial of title was the moment that triggered the limitation period, and that the doctrine of continuing wrong cannot be used to revive a claim over ownership that has already become time-barred.
While the Supreme Court has not yet addressed the merits, its decision to stay the judgment suggests a concern that limitation rules should not be so easily sidestepped. Whether the Court ultimately restores the Single Judge’s approach remains to be seen, but the stay signals that the questions raised by the division Bench’s reasoning are likely to come under close scrutiny.
I would like to thank Praharsh for his input.
