4 judgments of the Supreme Court of India, the Karnataka High Court and 2 other courts applying Copyright Act s.63, from 2023–2026, each with a headnote by BRB Legal.
Summoning order and the entire criminal proceeding quashed. The complaint alleging that the film Kahaani-2 copied the complainant's script contained bald and unsubstantiated allegations that did not even prima facie disclose any similarity, and neither the complainant nor his witnesses identified a single feature said to be copied. The Dispute Settlement Committee of the Screen Writers Association, comprising experts, had already found no similarity and dismissed the complaint, a material fact the complainant concealed from the court. The Magistrate's summoning order recorded no satisfaction as to similarity and was mechanical. Decisively, the appellant's synopsis and script were registered in 2012 and 2013 while the complainant's script was registered only in 2015, so the complainant's work did not exist when the appellant registered his screenplay and infringement could not arise. The proceedings were held manifestly frivolous and vexatious.
Petition under section 482 CrPC to quash the prosecution dismissed. The proviso to section 115(4) of the Trade Marks Act, requiring a police officer to obtain the Registrar's opinion before search and seizure, is not mandatory; non-compliance is an irregularity which does not vitiate the investigation unless the accused establishes at trial that it occasioned a failure of justice. Where the complaint was registered under section 63 of the Copyright Act and the Trade Marks Act offences came to light only once the seizure was under way, the officer was under no obligation to obtain the opinion at that stage, since the articles could not reach the Registrar without first being seized. Whether the Copyright Act complaint was a device to bypass the proviso is itself a question for trial, on which the complaint could then be dismissed.
Rectification petition under section 50 of the Copyright Act dismissed. A petitioner who clears the person aggrieved threshold must still prove that the entry was wrongly made. The petitioner sought to do so by relying on a Lebanese third party's trade mark registrations in Australia and elsewhere to show that the respondent's artistic work was not original, but that third party was never made a party. Foreign trade mark registrations are not incontrovertible evidence of authorship of an artistic work, and rectifying the register on them would rest on extraneous and unverified evidence. The Berne Convention does not assist, since it is for the alleged author to assert its own rights. Section 48 makes the register only prima facie evidence, leaving any true author free to claim. The petitioner was also approbating and reprobating, having itself claimed in its own opposition to be the originator of the same artistic work.
Appeal allowed, the temporary injunction set aside and the application remanded for fresh consideration. The District Judge had rested the injunction on the plaintiff's registration alone, with no discussion of prior user, of sections 31 and 34 of the Trade Marks Act, or of the defendant's documents, and only a cryptic treatment of prima facie case, balance of convenience and irreparable loss. The Court held that while a mini trial is not justified at the injunction stage, that does not relieve the trial judge of the duty to analyse the ingredients. Order 41 Rules 23 to 27 CPC, including the powers of remand and to admit additional evidence, apply to appeals from orders through Order 43 Rule 2. The respondent's request that the injunction continue during the remand was refused: once the appeal is allowed setting the injunction aside, a contrary order on the same lines cannot be passed.
