The Supreme Court ruled in favour of script writer Jyoti Kapoor in a copyright dispute against film director Kunal Kohli, holding that substantial similarities existed between Kapoor’s script “R.S.V.P.” and Kohli’s forthcoming film “Phir Se.” The Supreme Court ordered Kohli to pay compensation of Rs. 25 lakh and directed that Kapoor receive due credit for the idea of the story.<\/p>\n
Kapoor’s ordeal began when she emailed her script to Kohli in the hope of securing a film deal. Kohli proposed to purchase the script outright, which would have deprived Kapoor of any writing credit; the deal accordingly fell through. Kohli thereafter commenced work on “Phir Se”, a project with a storyline that Kapoor considered substantially similar to her script.<\/p>\n
Upon noticing the similarities, Kapoor approached the Film Writers Association, whose dispute settlement body ruled in her favour and placed a stay on the film shoot. Kohli appealed to the Appellate Tribunal, which upheld the decision of the Film Writers Association. Kohli then approached the Joint Dispute Settlement Committee comprising members of the IMPPA and the Federation of Western India Cine Employees; Kapoor, however, suspected possible procedural irregularities that could affect the outcome and chose to approach The High Court directly. The High Court ordered Kohli to furnish a guarantee of Rs. 50 lakh but vacated the stay on the film shoot. Dissatisfied with that outcome, Kapoor approached the Supreme Court, which ruled in her favour, holding that Kohli had committed copyright violation and breach of confidentiality.<\/p>\n
The decision, reached after an eight-month dispute traversing multiple forums, is widely regarded as an affirmation that the law does not invariably favour established production houses over independent script writers, and may encourage other writers to pursue legal remedies when their work is misappropriated.<\/p>\n
This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified attorney before acting on any matter discussed here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Supreme Court\u2019s decision in favour of Jyoti Kapoor marks a crucial victory for Indian scriptwriters in copyright disputes. The judgment affirms legal protection for original creators, even against established production houses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":54,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[295,6632,12908,7325,296,297,3902],"class_list":["post-26008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyrights","tag-breach-of-confidentiality","tag-copyright-law-india","tag-film-script-copyright","tag-film-writers-association","tag-jyoti-kapoor","tag-kunal-kohli","tag-supreme-court-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26008"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149835,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26008\/revisions\/149835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}