Kollywood’s Intellectual Property mess

Fraudsters exploit ignorance, lack of access to information to make a quick buck

July 08, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 05:32 am IST - CHENNAI:

A routine case of Intellectual Property Rights infringement which was resolved at the Madras High Court on June 27 has exposed some of the chinks in its armour, particularly on the digital rights front.

The case was filed by Ayubkhan who holds the digital rights of five Tamil films ( Ghajini , Ramcharan , Azhagai Irukuirai Bayama Irukiradhu , Arindhum Ariyamalum and Pattiyal ). During the proceedings, it was found that Sarika Jain, who owns Peppermint Pvt. Ltd. had in her possession documents that attested that she had been sold the rights to films including the five. Ms. Jain claimed to have bought the digital rights to the 166 movies at Rs. 10,000 each. Finally, it turned out that the person who ‘sold’ her the rights had fabricated the documents.

Advocate M. V. Swaroop, who appeared for Ayubkhan against those who had uploaded the films on YouTube, says that the digital rights were sold to Sarika Jain by a person named R. Subramani using fake agreements and documents. While the verdict was in favour of Ayubkhan, it is likely to reignite the debate over intellectual property rights in the film industry and the role of the Tamil Film Producers Council in creating the necessary infrastructure to safeguard the rights of its members. Considering that Ayubkhan had spent close to Rs. 1.5 crore to acquire the rights of just these five films, the total amount of money that is at stake could run into several hundred crores.

“Basically, people are making money using fake agreements because there is no database with the Producers Council which will help verify who really holds these rights,” Mr. Swaroop says.

Council secretary T. Siva, said that this was a simple case of the buyer being careless. “The information can be obtained from the labs. They have a good system of record-keeping. The problem with the onus of keeping records being on the Producers Council is that some members might not want to share the information. At the lab, they have to,” he says.

However, a well-known filmmaker says that the labs “used to keep records but not anymore”.

“Everything changed when we adopted digital projection. The labs don’t really have the information these days,” he says.

Advocate Krishna Ravindran, who appeared for four out of seven respondents in the case, calls the whole system completely unorganised. “In some cases, producers sell the rights many times. Finally, when a big TV channel comes calling, they sell it to them as well. Now, what happens to the agreements signed previously? This can be sorted out only when the agreements are registered and are available online for public viewing,” he says.

Prashant Reddy, who has appeared in IP cases, says that one must be able to check who holds the copyright.

( Inputs from Sanjay Vijayakumar )

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