Zanjeer Battle Continues: Scriptwriters Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan Reach the Bombay HC

Image from here

Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan the scriptwriters of the original Zanjeer have moved the Bombay High Court against Sumeet Mehra and others/. As reported, the authors claim that they had allowed Prakash Mehra Productions (PMP) (Sumeet and Puneet Mehra were named the heirs to this production company) only to a one-time use of their script i.e. in making the original Zanjeer and had not authorized any reuse of the same. They also contend that since they retained the copyright over the ‘literary work’ i.e. the script, any use of the same requires their consent. 

The authors filed an application for urgent relief in the form of a stay on the release of the remade Zanjeer. The defendants (Sumeet Mehra and others) informed the court that the movie would not be released for another four weeks. Upon this statement, the Judge S J Kathawalla, adjourned the case till April 17. 

As blogged here, here and here, the remake of Zanjeer is caught in a legal mess. The several legal proceedings concerning this remake are and have been – 1) an ongoing arbitration between Amit Mehra and Sumeet and Puneet Mehra, 2) an arbitration petition before the Bombay High Court between Amit and Sumeet/Puneet Mehra. This got decided a few days back and we blogged about it here, 3) dispute resolution before the Dispute Settlement Committee of the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) between the authors and Amit Mehra. The FWICE, as reported, said it will comply with the decision of the court in the arbitration petition  and 4) the present suit before the Bombay High Court between the authors of the original script and Sumeet Mehra and others. 

Since the authors were not parties to the arbitration petition, they have filed a fresh suit in this matter. It is important to note that the judgment in the arbitration petition swayed in the favour of Amit Mehra largely because of the absence of a written agreement of assignment of copyrights between the authors and PMP. This fact lead the court to hold that the authors retained their copyright over the script and therefore PMP was not authorized to allow any remake as it had no title over the script. This finding seems to overlap with and even answer questions that may be raised in the suit between the authors and PMP. Therefore these two cases seem inherently interlinked. 

It is assumed that the decision in the arbitration petition will have a strong bearing in the present case between the authors and PMP. However, this cannot create a presumption against PMP since the present case against the authors is a fresh suit and both parties will have to be given fair hearing.