Bombay High Court today passed an ad-interim dynamic injunction to restrain unknown “John Doe’s” and digital platforms from recording, hosting and streaming of upcoming movie Ramayana. [Godpower Media Private Limited v. John Does & Ors]

An ad-interim was passed by the court on a suit filed by Godpower Media Private Limited against infringement of copyright. Godpower Media being a Mumbai based company owns copyright and exploitation rights in the movie. As they have bought all domestic and territorial rights of the IP.

The movie is set to release theatrically worldwide on November 5 and they have sought injunction to protect the underlying work i.e. script, characters, clips etc from being used by any party without authorization.

It was brought to the notice of the court that part I of the movie has cost them 2000 crores and total of 2 parts is going to cost them 4000 crores.

It was brought to notice of the court that although the previews were held only for invited guests with NDAs however the trailers were leaked by some persons and uploaded on digital networks.

Honourable Justice Madhav Jamdar held that-

“Prima facie I find that Plaintiff (Godpower) has bona fide apprehension of its movie or parts thereof being recorded and uploading/streaming or communicating to public through various mediums.”

Relief granted by the Court includes passing a dynamic injunction against unknown “John Doe’s” from dissemination of its movie. They have also directed ISPs and social media intermediaries to block/dynamically block the link and remove mirror sites as and when informed in writing by Godpower.

Counsel for Google LLC and global social media intermediaries stated that they would comply to block offending links once informed. No objections were taken by them.

Court directed Godpower to inform ISPs and other platforms about offending links with respect to their movie and they shall immediately block/disable access/remove the offending content.

Next date of hearing is 16th December.

Senior Advocate Ashish Kamath along with Advocate Ameet Naik and Madhu Gadodia instructed by Anand and Naik appeared on behalf of Godpower Media.