KAPIL CHOPRA Vs. KUNAL DESHMUKH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Greed and deceit are two human traits which are very often part of the stories of Hindi films. These traits also seem to be writ large on the defence of Respondents 1 and 2, (director and producer of film "Jannat 2") in the action taken out by the appellant plaintiff for infringement of copy right and for breach of confidence, wherein it is the case of the appellant plaintiff that the plaintiff had given to Respondent/Defendant No. 1 and Defendant No. 1 accepts that the plaintiff had given to Defendant No. 1 the story for a film.

(2.) The plaintiff has filed Suit (Lodging) No. 1182 of 2012 and also filed Notice of Motion (Lodging) No. 1490 of 2012 for injunction against the release of the film "Jannat 2" directed by Defendant No. 1 and produced by Defendant No. 2. It is the case of the plaintiff that the plaintiff had registered his script "Zero" with the Film Writers Association on 12 November, 2007 and that the film 'Jannat 2' was in clear infringement of plaintiff's script. It is the case of the plaintiff that the plaintiff had discussed the story with Defendant No. 1 and had personally met Defendant No. 1 several times discussing the story. Reference is made to the text messages exchanged between the plaintiff and Defendant No. 1 and also to the email messages. There is no dispute about the fact that the plaintiff had given recitation of the story in December 2009 and thereafter by August 2010 the plaintiff had given full script of the story to Defendant No. 1 and in January 2011 the plaintiff had given script flow to Defendant No. 1. When the plaintiff came to learn from promos of the film that the Defendant Nos. 1 and 2 have made a film on the story about the police and informer, the plaintiff had approached Defendant No. 1 and inquired whether the film is based on the same story and the Defendant No. 1 denied the same and informed the plaintiff that it was based on some other story of film "infernal affairs".

(3.) The plaintiff filed suit on 2 May 2012. The learned Single Judge declined to grant ad interim injunction against release of the film on the ground that there are several films made in the past on the broad concept of police and informer. Learned Single Judge accepted the case of the Defendants that there is no commonality and that the script of the story in the film to be released in essence depicts a love story and how there is transformation of the protagonist after the criminal activities are noted by him and reported to police. The learned Single Judge also held that at that stage before release of the film, merely on the basis of the contents of the emails and the identical scene chart, it was not possible to hold that there was any breach of the confidentiality or that there was a breach of copyright in the plaintiffs work. The learned Single Judge held that the plaintiff had based his story on the broad outline and theme of criminals and their being a cop who is not protecting the interest of the society but is assisting and helping the criminal in the garb of performing his duty, but that may be a common factor in the concept or idea of the film and in the script of the plaintiff but it is not proper to hold before release of the film that there are complete similarities and that there is a complete copy of plaintiffs work.