The Bombay high court on August 6 dismissed an application for copyright infringement against Balaji Telefilms for its film, Dream Girl 2. It said that the applicant’s story and that of the film under question were completely different and hence the claim of breach of confidence was far-fetched. The application was made by one Ashim Kumar Bagchi, seeking an injunction to restrain defendant no. 1 — Balaji Telefilms — from exploiting its film, Dream Girl 2, alleging infringement of his script, ‘Kal Kisne Dekha’, which had later been re-registered as ‘The Show Must Go On’. The applicant alleged that breach of confidence was committed by defendant no. 4.
Defendant no. 4 was engaged by Balaji for the purpose of writing the story, screenplay and dialogues based on the concept titled ‘Dream Girl 2’ which he (defendant no. 4) claimed was authored by him. However, defendant no. 5 claimed to have solely and exclusively authored an original literary work titled ‘Dream Girl 2’ and had registered the same with the Screenwriters Association on July 15, 2021.
On the other hand, the applicant (Bagchi) stated that he had written and developed an original story in the form of a script and got it registered on May 25, 2007. Its central idea was of gender swap comedy where the protagonist, a male, donned the persona of a female and tackled various comedic situations whenever his identity was in fear of getting exposed. He claimed that his script was an original literary work within its meaning under the Copyright Act, 1957. The applicant alleged that the contents of his script were confidential and were shared by him with defendant no. 4 under strict conditions of confidence, in pursuit of the possibility of identifying a producer. He explained that the defendants had, in making their film, infringed the applicant’s copyright in the literary work. The applicant also alleged that defendant no. 5 was subsequently introduced only to aver suspicion away from defendant nos. 1 and 4, who had access to and knowledge of the applicant’s original literary work. He added that he had earlier filed a suit against the defendants when they had released Dream Girl 2, but this court had refused to restrain the release at the eleventh hour.
The court observed that the applicant, by alleging copyright infringement of his script by the defendants’ film, was seeking a monopoly over matters in which ex facie no copyright subsisted to begin with. This included common themes, ideas, unoriginal/stock/scenes à faire matters, and other aspects directly flowing from such elements which were not protectable either by themselves or taken together. Consequently, the court dismissed the application and awarded costs to defendant nos. 1 and 5 in a sum of Rs. 1 lakh each.
