Knock(ed) Out!

Please note that this post stands corrected. Read our clarification here.

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Indian courts seem to be catching up with Bollywood rip-offs of Hollywood movies in terms of awarding proportionate damages to Hollywood studios. The Bombay High Court last week held the producers of Knock Out (2010 Bollywood movie) liable for copyright infringement and, decreed damages for Rs. 1.25 crores payable to 20th Century Fox. The Court after viewing both movies found that the makers of Knock Out had massively copied from the widely acclaimed movie Phone Booth( released in 2002) produced by 20th Century Fox. 

The matter was filed in 2010 in the Bombay High Court before the movie was due for release. The plaintiffs contended copyright infringement on the ground that reliable industry sources had informed them about the films being grossly similar. Phone Booth revolved around a man trapped in a phone booth in a hostage situation with a sniper forced to come clean about his extra-marital affair. Knock Out also revolved around a man trapped a phone booth, however, the movie revolved around Indian politicians. The respondents contended that no person can claim a monopoly over the idea of a film around a phone booth. A single bench court stayed the release of the movie, however, the respondents managed to vacate the injunction by appealing to a division bench. On appeal, the respondents were allowed to release the movie subject to them having deposited Rs. 1.5 crores with the Court. Finally, last week the Court held the respondents liable for copyright infringement. Further, the producers of Phone Booth have been barred from exploiting their movie in any manner whatsoever from March 5, 2013 onwards. This case reportedly happens to be the highest payment for copyright infringement in India. [Edit: Correction, 20th Century Fox settled out of Court with BR Films’ in the plagiarism dispute involving 'Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai' copying the Oscar winning 'My Cousin Vinny'; and not won against BR Films' as previously published]. 

Indian movies have a notorious reputation for copying the story lines of major Hollywood flicks and spicing them up to cater to the Indian audience; all under the garb of ‘taking inspiration’ from the original. However in the past five years, Hollywood studios have started an aggressive enforcement of their copyrights.    Amongst several other factors, a prominent indication is the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) opening office in India in 2009, to protect and promote the American film industry. Rajiv Dalal, the director of MPAA-India said in this article “Before Hollywood was only doing this[scouting for plagiarised content] through consultants. Now we will be more successful because we are here working with the local industry.” We have extensively covered the issues of plagiarised scripts, musical compositions, and more occurring in Bollywood in recent times in these posts.