Copyright Owners Have Right To Dub Cinema: Delhi High Court Vacates Stay On Hindi Dub Of Telugu Movie Bheemla Nayak
Case: Ja Entertainment Pvt Ltd V. Ms Sithara Entertainment & Ors.
Coram: Justice Jyoti Singh
Case No.: CS(COMM) 191/2022
Court Observation: “…by the operation of law, Defendant No. 1 in its own right as a copyright owner has a right to dub the Telugu film in any language including Hindi and Plaintiff cannot assert any right to restrain Defendant No. 1 from dubbing the Telugu film in Hindi”
“The use of the expression “otherwise enjoys” after the words seen or heard enlarges the scope of how communication with the public has to be made…The Legislature it seems consciously has enlarged the scope of the expression “communication to the public” by bringing in the aspect of enjoyment. Dubbing would, thus, in our view, fall within the ambit of the expression communicating to the public…In short, the principle being that the owners of copyright in a cinematographic work will, inter alia, have the right to both sub-title and dub their work.”
“Perusal of the ex parte ad interim injunction granted by this Court shows that the considerations that weighed with the Court while granting the injunction were the contentions of the Plaintiff that: (a) the right to remake the Malayalam film in Hindi language was exclusively vested in the Plaintiff, which was infringed by Defendant No. 1 under Section 51 of the Act; (b) Defendant No. 1 was not assigned the right by Defendant No. 3 to dub the Malayalam film or its remake in Hindi language; and (c) Plaintiff has invested considerable amount of money in the pre-production stage of its proposed Hindi remake of the Malayalam film and if the suit film is allowed to be released, commercial viability of Plaintiff’s proposed film shall be considerably damaged.”
“Plaintiff, no doubt, has a right to remake the Malayalam film in Hindi language as well as dub the same or the New Film in any language, however, Defendant No. 1 has admittedly dubbed the remade Telugu film (suit film) in Hindi, which does not infringe the Plaintiff’s right, applying the provisions of Section 51 of the Act. As far as the commercial viability of the proposed film of the Plaintiff is concerned, this is a factor which is wholly irrelevant to the issue of alleged violations of the provisions of the Copyright Act, under which an action for infringement can only be predicated on existence of a copyright.”
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Keywords
Copyright Owners, Dub Cinema
