Karnataka High Court: Reserved Order On Congress Leader, Plea Moved For Quashing FIR; KGF Song Copyright Infringement

The Karnataka High Court in the case Jairam Ramesh & Others And State of Karnataka & ANR observed and has reserved its order on the plea moved by Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh and Supriya Shrinate wherein seeking to quash the FIR which is being registered against them by MRT Music over the alleged copyright infringement by the use of song from Kannada movie ‘KGF Chapter 2’ in the promotional video for the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’.
The single bench headed by Justice M Nagaprasanna in the case observed and has reserved the order after hearing both sides. Earlier, the court continued the interim order of stay passed, till the pronouncement of the order.
It has been argued by the petitioner in the plea that Section 63 of the Copyright Act has a heightened threshold of infringement, thus, the question of infringement at large itself is before the civil court and the suit has been preferred by them under section 55 of the Act.
Further, the petitioner in the plea stated that it has been stated under Section 63 speaks of knowingly infringing copyright but, there is no such mention of that in the complaint. Therefore, all the A3 i.e., the Rahul Gandhi in the case has admittedly done and Rahul Gandhi walked or portrayed to be walking with the music in the background. Thus, wherein it is being portrayed in a video, would it amount to A3 knowingly infringing a copyright? Onus under Section 63 is to show that person in the case knowingly infringed the copyright.
Before the court, the counsels, Senior Advocate S Sriranga and Advocate Pranav Kumar Mysore appeareing for the complainant M Naveen Kumar argued that the petitioners-accused had taken the source code, meddled with it and superimposed the video. Therefore, it has also been stated by the said court that 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, which being subject to all just exceptions.
Further, it has been argued before the court that if it has been claimed by the petitioner that they were completely ignorant and did not know about what was happening or the fact that the video or audio was being used petitioner, thus, this being something which they have to establish in the due process.
The counsel appearing also referred to Section 2 (f) of the Act and it is not only being the audio in the background that is used, here being the case where everything of my work is used, font, lyrics, animation, only the logo is changed/
However, the civil suit was also filed by MRT Music, wherein it has been directed by the trial court for blocking the social media handles of the Congress party and Bharat Jodo Yatra. Therefore, the High Court lifted the order in an appeal moved by the Congress party, on an undertaking given by it to take down the offending videos.
Accordingly, the court invoked the FIR offences as stated under section 120-B, section 403, section 465 read with Section 34 of Indian Penal Code, 1860 and Section 63 of Copyright Act, Section 66 of IT Act.