Now NDTV reports that whilst “Bollywood is known for brazenly borrowing 'inspiration' from Western films”, this may be changing after the Bombay High Court decreed in favour of 20th Century Fox who had brought the action against the producers of the 2010 release Knock Out which stars Sanjay Dutt, Irfan and Kangna Ranaut - although it has taken 3 years to reach a conclusion. The case was first filed just before Knock Out was about to release, and at that time the court had issued an injunction against the release after watching both the films. On appeal, the producers were allowed to release the film, subject to the deposit of R 1.5 crore (which I make as approximately £180,000 or US $280,000) with the court.
Now the court has awarded Rs 1.25 crore (£152,000
or $230,000) to Fox and, say NDTV, "Furthermore, the producers of Knock Out are not permitted to exploit their
film in any manner whatsoever from March 5, 2013 onwards” adding “This is
possibly a landmark judgment in the history of such litigation in India as it
also constitutes the highest payment for copyright infringement in the country". Is this right? I struggled with currency conversion and the concept if the "crore" – I am told by the great god Google that 100 crores is a billion Rupees - and the “lakh crore” is a trillion Rupees. If any of our Indian friends can add to this, or the details of the judgment, I would be most grateful.
http://movies.ndtv.com/bollywood/in-landmark-judgement-i-knock-out-i-makers-lose-copyright-infringement-case-343210
http://www.onemint.com/2011/04/07/crores-to-millions-calculator/
Apologies for reversing the film titles in the penultimate paragraph of my first posting of this update - yes - this made no sense at all (!) and a big thank you to our eagle eyed readers for promptly alerting me
