Prima Facie No Copyright Violation: Delhi HC Rejects Plea To Restrain Release Of Television Series ‘Yakshini’
The Delhi High Court has refused to grant an ad interim temporary injunction against the release of the television series ‘Yakshini’ on the basis of lack of any prima facie copyright violation of expression of idea of a mythological character.
An Application was filed by the Pocket FM under Order XXXIX read with Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908(‘CPC’) seeking an ad interim temporary injunction for restraining Defendants from publishing, advertising, selling, offering, marketing etc. of the video adaptation in the Television Series “Yakshini” on their website or any other audio, video adaptation.
The Bench of Justice Neena Bansal Krishna observed, “The plaintiff may have prepared audio series on this work, but there is nothing at this stage to say that the adaption of the character of „Yakshini‟, in the video web-series is almost similar or identical to the work of the plaintiff. The similarity of name cannot be the sole criteria, especially because it is a mythological character on which admittedly various works, movies and books are already available. Prima facie, there is nothing to reflect that there is copyright violation of expression of idea as is asserted by the plaintiff. Once, the web series has already been slated to be released today itself, no prima facie case is made out.”
Senior Advocate Darpan Wadhwa appeared for the Plaintiff and Advocate Sidharth Chopra for the Defendants.
The plaintiff, Pocket FM Private Limited, is engaged in providing an online platform by the name of “Pocket FM” through which it offers audio works such as audio series and audiobooks, to its users. The plaintiff submitted that in the first week of June 2024, they came across a Trailer on Defendant No. 2 website of a television series titled “Yakshini” on Defendant No.1’s official YouTube channel “Disney+Hotstar”.
From a preliminary viewing of the impugned Trailer video along with the comments in the Comment Section, it appeared that Defendant No.1 has made an unauthorized adaptation of Plaintiff’s audio series “Yakshini”. It was also indicated that the impugned Television series is set to be released on June 14, 2024, on Defendant No.1’s website www.hotstar.com.
The Court said that considering that the Suit was filed just a day prior to the slated release of the video series with no concrete facts to establish that there is a prima facie case of infringement of the rights of the plaintiff, no case was made out in favour of the plaintiff for granting of an ad-interim injunction at this stage.
The Court relied on the landmark judgment in R.G. Anand v. Delux Films & Ors. (1978 SC), which laid down three tests for copyright violation, firstly, there can be no copyright in an idea, subject matter, themes, plots or historical or legendry facts and violation of the copyright in such cases is confined to the form, manner, arrangement and expression of the idea by the author of the copyrighted work. The second test stated that where the source is common, the similarities are bound to happen. The third test to determine the violation of copyright is to see if the readers, spectators or viewers after reading or seeing the same, are clearly of the opinion and get an unmistakable impression that subsequent work appears to be a copy of the original.
The Court held, “It may be observed that aside from the averments that there is similarity of the character “Yakshini”, character of “Aghori”, and the similarity in description of the scenario, at this stage, there is nothing from where it can be inferred that there is a copyright violation of the “expression of idea” by defendant No. 1.”
Accordingly, the Court refused to grant ad interim temporary injunction on the release of television series.
Cause Title: Pocket FM Pvt. Ltd. v. Novi Digital Entertainment Private Ltd. & Anr. (Neutral Citation: 2024:DHC:4752)
Appearances:
Plaintiff: Senior Advocate Darpan Wadhwa, Advocates Shantanu Sahay, Nishchal Anand and Vareesha Irfan.
Defendants: Advocates Sidharth Chopra, Sneha Jain, Snehima Jauhari, Vivek Kumar and Aditya Gupta.