Rakesh Roshan caught copying music for Krazzy 4

The Roshans versus Ram Sampath copyright case has brought to the fore once again the rampant plagiarism present in Bollywood. I have seen sequences copies frame by frame from Hollywood movies. Copying of stories is common. And copying of music is even more so. Therefore it is great that the owner of the copyright of his music challenged one of the biggest production houses in court and won.

Rakesh Roshan used some jingles created for ads and owned by Ram Sampath for his latest movie Krazzy 4. It is sad that Rakesh Roshan was the man on the receiving end because he has a reputation for integrity. According to him he thought that Sony owned the copyrights and even has a No Objection Certificate from them, which Sony now claims was given in error. Where Rakesh Roshan went wrong was despite there being sufficient evidence of his having copied the music, he claimed in court that the music was created by his brother Rajesh Roshan. He probably did this on bad legal advice in an attempt to evade the copyright infringement charge and lost his reputation along with the case. Sampath asked for a stay on the release of the movie. The court gave Roshan the option of releasing the movie without the disputed tracks. This would spell disaster for the movie. Nor was Roshan prepared to delay the release. Hence he had no option but to fork out the Rs 2 crore ($500,000) demanded by Sampath.

Sampath too has been blamed for harassment by many Bollywood sources. Though Sampath did not do anything illegal they claim his action was immoral. The music was released two months ago, but Sampath waited till the movie was due for release before making his move. He thus left Roshan with no option but to pay up. Had Sampath acted earlier Roshan, in the worst case, could have changed the music and Sampath would be left with nothing. All is fair in love and war and I do not find fault with Sampath for getting the best deal for himself.

I have no idea whether Sony’s act of issuing the invalid NOC is illegal. Perhaps not, because they only gave their no objection and not their permission. But if Sony can be taken to court I would like to see it done because their carelessness is the root cause of this mess.