On the 28th of June, the Karnataka High Court refused to quash an FIR registered against Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh, and Supriya Shrinate in a copyright infringement case. The case was registered by a music company named MRT Music. They alleged that the Congress leaders violated copyright rules and used a song from the popular Kannada movie “KGF Chapter 2” in their promotional video for the “Bharat Jodo Yatra”.
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 FIR against Congress leaders includes allegations of offences under sections 120-B, 403, and 465 read with Section 34 of the IPC, as well as Section 63 of the Copyright Act and Section 66 of the IT Act.
Earlier, on June 23, the Court heard the arguments from both sides and reserved its order.
MRT Music had filed the case in November 2022, after it found that Congress used its music from ‘KGF Chapter 2’ in 2 promotional videos of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. The complaint said, “Rahul Gandhi has resorted to getting videos created showcasing his heroism and to portray to the general public at large that he is a mass leader. For this reason, he has portrayed himself in the infringing video particularly considering the fact that the movie and more particularly the songs and the audio visual clippings of the two songs in the movie KGF chapter two have gained mass appeal and acceptance”.
The songs used by the party to portray Rahul Gandhi as a ‘hero’ were ‘Falak Tu Garaj Tu’ and ‘Sulthan’ from the superhit movie KGF Chapter 2.
The case proceedings
During the proceedings, Senior Advocate Vikram Huilgol appeared for the petitioners. He argued that Section 63 of the Copyright Act has stricter criteria to prove infringement. He said, “The question of infringement at large itself is before the civil court. They have preferred a suit under section 55.”
He further added that Section 63 speaks of “knowingly” infringing copyright but, there is no indication of that in the complaint. Huilgol said, “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? The onus in Section 63 is to show that person knowingly infringed the copyright.”
In this case, the complainant M Naveen Kumar was represented by Senior Advocate S Sriranga and Advocate Pranav Kumar Mysore. The complainant’s counsel argued that the petitioners-accused had taken the source code, meddled with it, and superimposed the video.
The counsel said, “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 the petitioners claim they were completely ignorant and unaware of what was happening or the usage of the video or audio, they will have to establish this in due process. Citing 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.”
The past antecedent of actions on the Copyright Infringement issue
Apart from this, MRT Music has also filed a civil suit against the Congress party and its leaders. On the 7th of November, a trial court ordered Twitter to block the social media handles of the Congress party and Bharat Jodo Yatra.
However, a day later, on November 8, the Karnataka High Court lifted the ban on the Congress party’s social media handles with an undertaking that the party will have to remove material from their handles that offend MRT Music’s copyrights.
