Delhi High Court has stopped over 30 parties from misusing Andaz Apna Apna’s iconic IP including characters, dialogues, and AI content. The court found copyright infringement in merchandise, domain names, and digital platforms.
The Delhi High Court has recently passed an important temporary order in favour of the makers of the famous 1994 Bollywood film Andaz Apna Apna.
The court has stopped more than 30 parties from using anything related to the movie without permission.
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This includes the film’s name, its popular characters, famous dialogues, and creative work like artistic images and scripts.
This order was given by Justice Amit Bansal after a legal case was filed by Vinay Pictures. The case was filed by Shanti Vinaykumar Sinha, who is the legal heir of the film’s original producer Vinay Sinha.
The petitioner told the court that many people and businesses were wrongly using the film’s intellectual property, including on T-shirts, posters, mugs, digital content, websites, and even AI-generated videos.
The complaint also included how some people had taken domain names related to the film and were using its famous dialogues and characters for selling products.
The court agreed with the arguments of Vinay Pictures and said that the movie still enjoys great popularity and is loved by audiences even after so many years.
The court noted:
“The plaintiff has demonstrated a prima facie case…[and] will suffer irreparable loss if relief is not granted.”
The plaintiff told the court that they are the rightful owner of the title Andaz Apna Apna, the film’s story and characters.
They said that the characters like Crime Master Gogo, who is known for the dialogue “Aankhen nikaal ke gotiyan khelta hoon main!”, Teja with the famous confusion line “Teja main hoon, mark idhar hai”, and the twin brothers Ram Gopal Bajaj and Shyam Gopal Bajaj played by Paresh Rawal, all belong to them.
The two lead characters Amar and Prem, played by Aamir Khan and Salman Khan, are also part of their copyright.
The plaintiff also pointed out that they have registered trademark rights over popular words from the movie like “Aila” and “Ouima”, and that these phrases have become famous and easily recognised by the public.
It was said in court that many companies and people were illegally making money by selling items using the movie’s name and content.
These products included T-shirts, mugs, notebooks, posters, and more. It was also shared that people were using AI-generated content and YouTube Shorts to copy scenes from the film.
Some had even used domain names like http://www.ailaouima.com.
The plaintiff presented a list of more than 70 online links that were found to be infringing and were active on platforms like Flipkart, Meesho, Etsy, and Desertcart.
The court said the situation was serious and could mislead customers.
According to the court,
“Any objections to the quality of the defendants’ products will be attributable to the plaintiff, as the public would have purchased such goods under the mistaken impression that they emanate from the plaintiff.”
After looking into the matter and checking the documents and links submitted by the plaintiff, the court gave several temporary directions.
The defendants were ordered not to make or share any content that copies or is based on the movie.
The exact words used by the court were: “…creating any content, including images, videos, audio-visual content, or AI-generated content which is identical to, adapted from, or derivative of the plaintiff’s film Andaz Apna Apna.”
The court also stopped the sale and promotion of any items that used names or logos similar to the film’s characters such as Teja, Crime Master Gogo, Amar, and Prem.
It further gave instructions to Google LLC (Defendant 26) to “…take down, remove, and disable the infringing videos, shorts, or other content uploaded by defendants no. 19 to 21…” Google was also asked to share information about the people who had uploaded those YouTube Shorts.
Flipkart, Etsy, Meesho, and Desertcart were told to take down all listings that had any products related to the film and to share the identity and payment information of the people who were selling those items.
The court also directed GoDaddy (Defendant 25) to provide the details of the person who registered the domain name http://www.ailaouima.com.
Further, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) was asked to
“…block and disable all infringing links, websites, and social media channels as identified by the plaintiff.”
The court said that this order would also apply to other similar websites or links (mirror or redirect URLs) and gave the plaintiff the right to add more infringers if needed.
The plaintiff Vinay Pictures was represented in court by Advocates Pravin Anand, Ameet Naik, Vaishali Mittal, Madhu Gadodia, Siddhant Chamola, Prachi Sharma, Shivang Sharma, Saijal Arora, Sujoy Mukherjee and Devushal Tudekar from the law firms Anand & Naik.
Google was represented by Advocates Mamta Jha, Rohan Ahuja, Shruttima Ehensa, Aiswarya Debadarshini and Rahul Choudhary from Inttl Advocare.
This order marks a strong step towards protecting the intellectual property rights of creators in India and shows that even older films like Andaz Apna Apna can receive legal protection against modern-day misuse including through digital media and AI.
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