KGF Song Copyright Infringement: Karnataka High Court Reserves Order On Congress Leaders' Plea For Quashing FIR

The Karnataka High Court on Friday reserved its order on the petition filed by Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh and Supriya Shrinate seeking to quash the FIR registered against them by MRT Music over the alleged copyright infringement by the use of song from Kannada movie "KGF Chapter 2" in the promotional video for the "Bharat Jodo Yatra".

A single judge bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna reserved the order after hearing both sides. The court continued the interim order of stay passed earlier, till pronouncement of order.

Senior Advocate Vikram Huilgol appearing for the petitioners argued that Section 63 (of the Copyright Act) has a heightened threshold of infringement. "The question of infringement at large itself is before the civil court. They have preferred a suit under section 55.”

Further he said Section 63 speaks of "knowingly" infringing copyright but, there is no whisper of that in the complaint. "All that A3 (Rahul Gandhi) has admittedly done has walked or portrayed to be walking with the music in the background. By being portrayed in a video, would that amount to A3 knowingly infringing a copyright? Onus in Section 63 is to show that person knowingly infringed the copyright.”

Senior Advocate S Sriranga and Advocate Pranav Kumar Mysore appearing for the complainant M Naveen Kumar argued that petitioners-accused had taken the source code, meddled with it and superimposed the video. “The Act provides for civil remedy and criminal prosecution, in the case of such infringement the outcome of one does not depend upon the outcome of other, subject to all just exceptions.”

It was further argued that if petitioners are claiming that they were completely ignorant and did not know about what was happening or the fact that the video or audio was being used, "this is something which they have to establish in the due process.”

Referring to Section 2 (f) of the Act the counsel said “It is not only audio in the background that is used, here is a case where everything of my work is used, font, lyrics, animation, only the logo is changed.”

MRT Music has also filed a civil suit, in which a trial court earlier directed the blocking of the social media handles of the Congress party and Bharat Jodo Yatra. The order was lifted by the High Court in an appeal filed by the Congress party, on an undertaking given by it to take down the offending videos.

The FIR invokes offences under sections 120-B, 403, 465 r/w Section 34 of IPC and Section 63 of Copyright Act, Section 66 of IT Act.

Case Title: Jairam Ramesh & Others And State of Karnataka & ANR

Case No: WP 25123/2022