Kangana Ranaut Accused of Copyright Infringement, Delhi HC Allows Release of 'The White Tiger' on Netflix, Bob Dylan Faces USD 7.25 Million ...

Kangana Ranaut Accused of
Copyright Infringement, Delhi
HC Allows Release of ‘The
White Tiger’ on Netflix, Bob
Dylan Faces USD 7.25 Million
Lawsuit and more.
January 29, 2021
Kangana Ranaut Accused of Copyright Infringement, Delhi HC
Allows Release of ‘The White Tiger’ on Netflix, Bitcoin
Websites Asked to Remove White Paper After Copyright
Infringement Claim, Bob Dylan Faces USD 7.25 Million Lawsuit,
TikTok faces Source Code Leak and Written Evidence for UK’s
Music Streaming Economics.

Kangana Ranaut Accused of Copyright
Infringement
Ashish Kaul, the author of the book, ‘Didda: The Warrior Queen
of Kashmir’ has claimed that, Kangana Ranaut’s film
‘Manikarnika Returns: The Legend Of Didda’ allegedly violates
his copyrights.

Kaul had asked the actress to write a foreword for the Hindi
version of his book in 2020 but had not got any reply either
from her or her manager. He claims the story and book have
been usurped by the actress who is on the verge of producing
the second instalment to her Manikarnika franchise.

Delhi HC Allows Release of ‘The
White Tiger’ on Netflix
The Delhi High Court refused to stay the release of the
film ‘The White Tiger’ on Netflix after a plea by American
producer John Hart Jr. Hart claimed that, there was an alleged
violation of a literary auction agreement between him and the
original author of the story, Aravind Adiga, which allowed the
American producer to make a film out of the book.

However, once he realized Netflix was also in the process of
making and releasing the film, he sent a cease and desist
notice. Netflix argued that the OTT film release involved huge
finances and goodwill that could be compromised if the release
was stayed.

The court agreed that it will cause “serious and irreparable
consequences to the defendants if the release of the film was
stalled at this stage and that it could not arrive at a prima
facie view that copyright was infringed.” Nevertheless,
Netflix was asked to keep detailed accounts in case a
copyright violation was proved later on.

Bitcoin Websites asked to remove
Infringing White Paper
Bitcoin.org and bitcoincore.org received allegations of
copyright infringement of the Bitcoin white paper from Craig
Wright, alleged owner of the paper, the Bitcoin name and of
bitcoin.org.      Claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the
pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Wright is just one of the
several claiming ownership over the Bitcoin white paper. In
2019, Wei Liu had come forward claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto
and registered a copyright for the white paper.

Crypto proponents claim that “the white paper was in the

original repo that was licensed under MIT” and that Bitcoin
white paper is open source and part of the public domain.

The bitcoin.org donation address for the organization’s legal
defense has started to receive a number of donations since
several Bitcoin supporters have tweeted about the copyright
infringement lawsuit.

Bob Dylan Faces USD 7.25 Million
Lawsuit
After selling his entire catalogue to Universal Music
Publishing Group, Bob Dylan is facing a USD 7.25 million
lawsuit, filed by the estate of songwriter Jacques Levy.

Levy, who cowrote seven of the nine tracks on Dylan’s
1976 Desire album, had signed a contract guaranteeing him 35
percent “of any and all income earned by the compositions.”
Nevertheless, Levy’s estate claims they didn’t receive a
payment from UMPG’s catalogue buyout.

Neither Bob Dylan nor Universal Music Group had commented
publicly on the case from Jacques Levy’s estate at the time
the songs were written.

TikTok faces Source Code Leak
A reverse engineer and coder, has reverse-engineered the
TikTok Android app revealing it to be a data collection engine
rather than a social network. The app includes dedicated
location tracking, phone call collection, screenshots saved to
the phone, all information about WiFi networks, and even some
facial recognition technology.

The source code was up on GitHub for a few days before TikTok
started sending DMCA takedowns to remove the leak. The coder
who uploaded the source code has not commented on the

situation since.

Written Evidence for UK’s Music
Streaming Economics
The committee behind the inquiry on music streaming economics
has published all the written evidence submitted by musicians,
industry bodies and other interested parties. Label body, the
BPI and the IFPI, drew the committee’s attention to the
problem of piracy agreeing that “digital growth has benefited
all participants in the value chain”, but “advertising-funded
and user upload platforms seriously undervalue the music
content on their platforms.”

A joint statement from FAC, The Ivors Academy, MMF, MPG and
the MU put forth “fundamental values” while music streaming
including putting a higher value on the songwriter, checking
the dominance of major music corporations and ensuring
equitable algorithms on streaming sites. BMG even went on to
propose a new system which entitled artists to receive a
higher cut from their recordings on streaming platforms.
Similarly, The Music Managers Forum and Featured Artists
Coalition brought attention to the lack of transparency in
lump sum payments by streaming platforms, proposing
codification of deal level transparency into the Copyright
Act.

On the other hand, Music Publishers Association and AIM were
against the unnecessary regulation of the music industry and
advocated freely negotiated contracts between songwriters and
music publishers. Finally, Madness requested the committee to
look into the active / “lean in” vs passive / “lean back”
model, while advocating an equitable mode of remuneration for
online music streaming.

Authored and compiled by Neharika Vhatkar (Associate, BananaIP
Counsels) and Aaditi Pradeep (Legal Intern)

The Copyright Law News Bulletin is brought to you jointly by
the Entertainment Law and Consulting/Strategy Divisions of
BananaIP Counsels, a Top IP Firm in India. If you have any
questions, or need any clarifications, please write
to contact@bananaip.com   with the subject:   Copyright Law News

Disclaimer: Please note that the news bulletin has been put
together from different sources, primary and secondary, and
BananaIP’s reporters may not have verified all the news
published      in    the   bulletin.     You     may      write
to contact@bananaip.com for corrections and take down.