Bombay high court judges may seldom find time to watch a movie but one judge on Wednesday had to make time to watch two films.
In a case of copyright infringement alleged by 20th Century Fox, justice Roshan Dalvi asked the representatives of the litigating parties to be present at the high court’s video conference room on Wednesday evening where she would watch Phone Booth and Knock Out.
Fox has alleged that the Hindi film is a copy of their 2003 film Phone Booth. Knock Out is scheduled to hit the cinemas on October 15. The judge said she would watch the films on Wednesday after court hours to assess if there has been any copyright infringement.
Seeking an injunction on Knock Out’s release, Fox alleged that Sohail Maklai Entertainment Private Limited (SMEPL), the producers of the film, had refused to part with their film’s screenplay.
The studio holds the copyright of Phone Booth’s script after the original screenplay writer Larry Cohen entered into an agreement with Fox in 1998, Fox’s counsel Virendra Tulzapurkar had told the court.
Tulzapurkar said his clients had learnt from “industry sources” that Knock Out was copied from Phone Booth. He read out excerpts of a media report on the website that claimed the film was a rip-off of their psychological thriller.
Arguing for SMEPL, advocate Ameet Naik, however, told the court that Phone Booth too was a copy of Liberty Stands Still, a film released in 2002. Naik said that Fox was seeking a monopoly on the idea of a film based on a phone booth, which is not permissible in law.
Justice Dalvi, however, said she would first watch the films and then decide if the court needed to go into the larger issue of monopoly over an idea. She said the question would not arise if, after watching the film, she did not find any copyright infringement. “We will see that later if there is anything or if damages need to be assessed,” Dalvi said.
SMEPL had contended that the film was unveiled at the IIFA awards ceremony in June this year but the copyright infringement suit just before the film’s release was nothing but “blackmail.”
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