Star India Pvt. Ltd. & Anr. v. Filmyclub.wapkiz.com & Ors., CS(COMM) 518/2021, Order Dt. O

Recently Star India Pvt. Ltd. (“#Star”) successfully enforced its rights in the Delhi High Court in connection with the #telecast of the upcoming cricket world cup. Star claimed that it had acquired telecast rights for a hefty fee and apprehended that the defendants, i.e., rogue websites, will infringe its rights by unauthorizedly telecasting the world cup matches. Such apprehension was based on the fact that the defendants had, in the past, transmitted IPL matches without any authorization and showed ‘#ICC Men’s World Cup’ as an upcoming event to be streamed on their websites.

While also impleading the Internet service providers and the Department of Telecommunications, Star placed reliance on prior precedent to pray for an omnibus direction in future to protect its rights. The court held that Star had established a prima facie case and passed an order restraining the defendants from #streaming, #broadcasting, #transmitting, etc. the upcoming world cup. The court further directed the Internet and telecom service providers to block access to the websites impleaded by Star. In addition to the above, the court also granted Star the liberty to identify more such infringing websites in the future and, upon filing of an affidavit, the same directions will apply to such additional websites.