In another infringement case, Star India Private Limited, a leading entertainment company, filed a suit seeking permanent injunction against rogue websites for infringement of copyrights of the Plaintiff in the film ‘Brahmastra Part One: Shiva’.
The Plaintiff contended that given the film is a work of visual recording including sound recordings and qualifies as a ‘cinematograph film’, hosting, streaming, communicating the film to the public etc., without authorization from the Plaintiff, by any means, on any platform, would infringe Plaintiff’s copyright. The Plaintiff further claims that the Defendant websites are primarily and substantially engaged in communicating to the public, hosting, streaming, etc. unauthorizedly, the copyright work of others.
The Plaintiff also added that the rouge websites, in order to make illegal gains make available the infringing copies of a film to general public, which had been merely released for theatrical exhibition, which the Plaintiff states is an important step towards releasing a film in a larger platform. The Plaintiff contended the same infringing act has happened with the Plaintiff earlier as well and accordingly, they apprehended that the rogue websites will attempt to do the same for the present film.
The court, observing the above, stated that piracy must be curbed from all ends and has to be dealt with a heavy hand by granting injunction against screening of copyrighted content by such rogue websites. The court thus while taking into account the vestments made by the Plaintiff in the production and promotion of the film and also its exclusive rights vested under Copyright Act, granted ex parte ad-interim injunction to the Plaintiff and ordered the rogue websites to restrain from hosting, streaming etc., to the public the copyrighted content of the Plaintiff, and ordered for blocking of the domain names and access to the rogue websites.
Star India Private Limited Vs 7MOVIERULZ.TC & ORS. CS (COMM) 604/2022, Order dated September 2, 2022
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