Case: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. & Ors. Vs. Moviesmod.Bet & Ors., Delhi High Court
The Plaintiffs who were leading global entertainment businesses involved in the creation, production, and distribution of motion pictures and cinematograph films, had discovered that the Defendants, were operating 45 unauthorized websites, were infringing their copyright by hosting, streaming, reproducing, and making the Plaintiff’s cinematograph works available to the public without permission.
Several of these websites had further masked their registration and contact details, making it difficult to identify or contact their operator. Moreover, hydra-heading implied mirror or alphanumeric variations of such websites, which are immediately floated upon an injunction on the first hosting website.
Need for Dynamic+ Injunctions
Dynamic injunctions have already expanded the horizontal sphere in the scope of injunctions by allowing restraining and impleadment of further parties, as and when their infringing activities surfaces, during the course of a suit.
However, such injunctions required more ammunition to deal with fluid nature of the internet. The reality of piracy is, however, is that when pirated sites are banned or taken down, they try to evade such injunction by morphing to hydra-headed or mirror or alphanumeric variations. Content can also be easily re-hosted, or moved to a another server of another country or entity abroad to further evade blocking measures. The possibility of an injuncted website for Content A of a production company to commence disseminating newly created Content B of the same production company, from its mirror or alphanumeric variations of such websites, makes the situation further complex.
All of the above, implied that, in absence of a further ammunition, a content creator would be made run to Court every time against a same website, each time its mirrored or alphanumeric or hydra-headed website is detected and/or a new content is created.
Dynamic+ injunctions have now come into play to not only protect the current original content in infringement cases, but further works as soon as new original content is created, and it is disseminated by any hydra-headed website or mirror or alphanumeric variations thereof. This type of dynamic+ injunction allows for a swift action and remedy without requiring a fresh court order each time an infringement occurs.
About the Case in Hand
Plaintiff’s Contentions
The Plaintiff argued that their cinematograph films are protected under the Copyright Act, 1957, and that the Defendants’ unauthorized use of their content without any right, title, or permission constitutes an infringement of their exclusive rights. Their works, which include sound recordings accompanied by visuals, are considered cinematograph films under the Copyright Act, 1957, and protected thereunder.
The grievance of the Plaintiff was against 45 websites hosting pirated contents, and several of them have masked their websites’ registration details, making it nearly impossible to track them down or take down the infringing content through regular means. Though notices were served to several such entities, no response was also received. They accordingly prayed for injunctions in similar lines to those granted in Applause Entertainment Private Limited vs. Meta Platforms Inc. and others[1] and Universal City Studios LLC. and Ors. vs. Dotmovies.baby and Ors.[2], and moved ex-parte.
Court Observations
The Hon’ble Court interestingly noted that the present is a situation where the Defendants herein are like a sapling with very few branches and will son grow into a big tree with many branches and deep roots, and thus the Defendants and anyone like them, needs to be stopped at the earliest, both in the present case as also in the future. The Hon’ble Court held that:
- The Plaintiff established a prima facie case for copyright infringement, as the unauthorized use of their content by the Defendants violated the provisions of the Copyright Act.
- There was a significant likelihood that the Plaintiff would suffer irreparable harm if the Defendants were not restrained, as the losses incurred from the unlawful distribution of the Plaintiff’s content could not be compensated monetarily.
The Court, therefore, granted a dynamic+ injunction to allow the Plaintiffs to protect their copyrighted works as soon as they are infringed/created, in order to ensure that no irreparable loss is caused to the owners of copyrighted works. Consequently, Plaintiffs have been permitted to implead any mirror/ redirect/alphanumeric variations of the websites, and including those websites which are associated with them, either based on the name, branding, identity or even the source of the content.
[1] IA No. 10257 of 2023 before the Hon’ble High Court of Judicature at Bombay
[2] 2023: DHC:5842
Authored by:
Dipro Dawn, IP Lawyer, S. Majumdar & Co.
Devanshi Bang, Student, Maharashtra National Law University Nagpur
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