Mr. Zubair claimed that around 2006 he wrote the script of the film "Once upon a time" and had it registered with the Film Writer's Association in Mumbai. He asserted that upon registration, he was accorded a registratio

CS Professional · Intellectual Property Rights - Laws and Practices · PYQS · December 2019
Mr. Zubair claimed that around 2006 he wrote the script of the film "Once upon a time" and had it registered with the Film Writer's Association in Mumbai. He asserted that upon registration, he was accorded a registration number: No.RNA-1856743. He claimed that he was looking out for producers, for conversion of the script into a film when he met Mr. Subhash Kapoor. As per him the meeting took place in and around May-June 2007 and agreed to convert it to movie. The pre-production work for making of the hindi version of "once upon a time", according to the him, commenced in and about July, 2007. Between July-January, 2008, several other producers had expressed interest in producing a hindi film, based on the script. However nothing happened as all such producers/production houses demanded transfer of entirety of rights in the script, which included derivative works, remakes and versions of films produced by them. Zubair was interested to grant a license to the producer to use his script for the limited purpose of making a cinematograph film in hindi language alone. The shooting of the film "once upon a time" commenced in December, 2008. 'The film finally completed on August, 2010. The film received excellent reviews from the critics and also won the Grand Jury Prize at the New York Film Festival, the film, did not do well commercially. As per Zubair the commercial failure of the film was on account of the producers not being able to provide wide publicity to the film. He claimed that since he got to know in March, 2013, that the producers are attempting to dub the film in Telugu, Punjabi, Bangla language and also, perhaps, were wanting to remake and/or adapt the said film, albeit, without his prior consent. Zubair feel betrayal and plan to take action against producer. Advise him on the following issues: What are the derivative rights ?

Answer & Explanation:

Copyright also protects 'derivative works' that includes translation, adaptation, arrangement of music and other alteration and modification of literary and artistic work-all receive the same protection as original works. Adaptation is generally perceived as a modification of original work to create another work. For example-adapting a novel to make a film or adapting a textbook that is originally written universities, to make it suitable for a lower level. Section 2(a) of the Copyright Ac, 1957 defines the word adaptation. An adaptation under Indian law is basically a change of format i.e. a copyrighted work is converted from one format to another. If an adaptation is created by adding a significant amount of new material, then such work would not be considered as adaptation under Copyright Act, 1957. The copyright in a derivative work will only extend to the material contributed by the adapter and does not affect the copyright protection given to the original material. According to copyright theory, adaptation is a work which is essentially the same as the original work although there may be a change in the format. If we refer to copyright theory and read it in conjunction with copyright law, it might be possible to argue that adaptations derivations, and transformations, are distinct species although they belong to the same family. Adaptation and derivation both belong to one genus and transformation belongs to another genus.

Topics: Copyright

Open in Interactive Practice Hub · Full Practice Hub · Chapter Weightage · More in this subject

Related Questions in this Topic