Bombay High Court: In an application seeking injunction against copyright infringement of web series “Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story” alleged to be a cinematic adaptation and dramatization of book ‘The Scam’, Manish Pitale, J. granted temporary injunction/ ex-parte ad-interim reliefs against defendants sharing clips, abridged versions, short versions, short snippets of audio-visual recordings, forming part of the said web series.
It is alleged that the authors of book ‘The Scam’ executed an assignment agreement in favour of plaintiff for valuable consideration to assign all rights in favour of plaintiff for adapting the book into a series/ audio-visual content. A Memorandum of Association was entered into with Sony Pictures, credits show the plaintiff as copyright owner of the web series. License was granted to Sony’s OTT platform, i.e., Sony LIV for broadcasting the same through license agreement dated 20-5-2020, which was released on the digital platform on 9-10-2020. Thus, the plaintiff claimed exclusive rights in the web series.
The instant application claims that the Instagram handle of two of the defendants published/communicated substantial parts of the said web series to the public in the context of their business and to promote their activities for generating revenues. The other defendants were also found to be using clips, abridged versions, short versions, short snippets of audio-visual recordings, forming part of the said web series on their social media handles. This made the plaintiff file a complaint with the defendant’s grievance redressal mechanism regarding infringing activities, which posed doubts on plaintiff being the owner of the said copyright. Thus, the plaintiff came up with the instant proceedings.
The Court based on documents placed on record demonstrated that “as regards its copyright in the aforesaid web series, a strong prima facie case is made out by the plaintiff in its favour.” The Court pointed that the nature of those documents reflect that the web series can only be watched on OTT Platform SonyLIV, and that communication or broadcast in any other form would amount to copyright violation, being prima facie in favour of the plaintiff. It also reflected that the defendants illegally used parts, snippets or short clips of the audio-visual content of the said web series on their Instagram handles to promote their own business activities, prima facie violating the plaintiff’s proprietary rights.
The Court acknowledged the prima facie case for granting ex-parte ad-interim relief in favour of the plaintiff. The Court was convinced that the plaintiff is likely to suffer grave and irreparable loss unless such interim reliefs are urgently granted.
Thus, the Court passed temporary injunction/ ex-parte ad-interim reliefs restraining defendants claiming through them from infringing the Plaintiff’s exclusive copyright in the web series “Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story” and delete/remove the impugned posts.
[Applause Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Meta Platforms Inc., 2023 SCC OnLine Bom 1034, Order dated 2-5-2023]
Order by: Justice Manish Pitale
Advocates who appeared in this case :
Advocate Hiren Kamod, Advocate Rahul Dhote, Advocate Narayani Prakash Choudhary, Advocate Raj Shah, Advocate Prashant Pandharikar;