The Delhi High Court has decreed a copyright infringement suit filed by ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. against RSY News, holding that the unauthorised reproduction and publication of ANI’s video works on RSY News’ YouTube channels amounted to copyright infringement.
Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav granted summary judgment under Order XIII-A of the CPC after finding that RSY News had reproduced 12 videos incorporating 10 original ANI videos, in several instances substantially or almost entirely, without ANI’s licence or authorisation. The Court noted that the infringing videos retained ANI’s logos and, in some instances, the Source: ANI attribution.
The Court rejected the contention that the reproduction was protected as fair dealing for reporting current events under Section 52(1)(a)(iii) of the Copyright Act, observing that the wholesale reproduction of ANI’s videos operated as a substitute for the original works. It also rejected RSY News’ purported defence that it had obtained a licence from Swami Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., noting that despite being served, RSY News neither appeared nor produced the alleged licence.
Holding that RSY News had no real prospect of successfully defending the claim and that no full-fledged trial was necessary, the Court permanently restrained RSY News from reproducing, uploading, publishing, distributing or otherwise exploiting ANI’s copyrighted works without authorisation.
The Court further directed RSY News to remove the 12 identified infringing videos from its four YouTube channels: RSY News, RSY News UP, RSY News Delhi and RSY News Bihar and confirmed the earlier directions to Google LLC to take down, block and disable access to the identified infringing URLs.
However, the Court declined ANI’s claim for damages of ?2 crore and ?500, as well as its prayer seeking a public acknowledgment of infringement. ANI had also given up its prayer seeking deletion of RSY News’ YouTube channels.
