AKASHADITYA HARISHCHANDRA LAMA Vs. ASHUTOSH GOWARIKAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) There is an unfortunate trend in this Court, increasingly frequent. At the eleventh hour, a few days or, at most, a few weeks before a major film's scheduled theatrical release, some party rushes to this Court with a claim that his or her creative work has been plagiarized by the film's director and producers. The present case is but the latest example.

(2.) What perhaps sets this one apart from others that went before is that this is quite possibly the most egregiously ill-conceived claim that I have yet encountered. As the following narrative will show, it is impossible to discern from the plaint or any of the Affidavits that have been filed by the Plaintiff, what it is that he claims has been infringed. His is an ever shifting stand. He is constant only in his inconstancy, and while I agree that a foolish consistency is often the hobgoblin of little minds, the very least an application for an urgent interim injunction demands is certainty in the claim made.

(3.) No plaintiff may come to this Court -- or, for that matter, any court -- and say "I claim my work is infringed. I cannot and will not say precisely what work or when or how; that is something the Court must figure out. But give me a relief it must, and it matters not how it goes about doing this." We are at a prima facie stage. The law says that in the grant of an interim injunction the Court must be satisfied that the Plaintiff has made out a "sufficient prima facie case". That must mean, in the cold language of both law and logic, that there must exist a case made sufficiency of precision. We use that expression freely, but it means nothing more than this: on a first impression, at first sight (literally, 'at first appearance' or 'at first sight'). It is to be carefully distinguished from ex-facie, "on the face of it". When, therefore, we say that a prima facie is made out, we mean that upon an initial examination, there is sufficient supporting and corroborative material before a court to support the claimant's case; that case must be facially evident. Therefore, any case that demands a convoluted, inferential, syllogistic process of reasoning, or proceeds on conjecture, surmise and speculation, is not one that meets the jurisprudentially mandated standard; and no interim injunction can follow. In the language of fiction, cinema and television: Watson, not Holmes. What this Plaintiff demands today would defeat even that legendary denizen of 221B, Baker Street.