Breaking: Karnataka High Court Refuses To Quash FIR Against Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh & Supriya Shrinate For KGF Song Copyright Infringement

A single bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna observed,

"Petitioner appeared to have tampered with source code, which would amount to infringement. Copyright of complainant is taken for granted and therefore prima facie all this requires investigation."

The Court had reserved the order after hearing both sides on June 23.

Senior Advocate Vikram Huilgol appearing for the petitioners had 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

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Kar) 243

Date of Order: 28-06-2023