Delhi High Court: In a case, wherein the plaintiff, Humans of Bombay Stories (P) Ltd. filed the present suit against the defendants, POI Social Media (P) Ltd. for seeking injunction restraining infringement of its copyrighted content which included, content, literary works, materials, films and creative expressions which was published on its website, Instagram handle and YouTube channel, Prathiba M. Singh, J., observed that prima facie there was substantial imitation, and, in some cases, the photographs/images were identical or imitative. Thus, the Court issued notice to the defendants.
The plaintiff owned and operated a storytelling platform in which stories of various individuals were uploaded in the form of interviews, write ups, posts, etc. The plaintiff submitted that it was engaged in substantial research, and approached various subjects who would be interested in narrating their life stories and the said stories were then converted into audio-video works and uploaded on the website on the various platforms. The grievance of the plaintiff was that the defendants had started an identical portal/service having identical content as that of the plaintiff by the name ‘People of India’, and further that they had replicated many images and videos from the plaintiff’s platforms and used the same on their platforms.
The Court took note of the images wherein the defendants had completely replicated plaintiff’s business model, stories and in order to create an imitative platform, the defendants were even approaching the very same subjects who were shown on the plaintiff’s websites.
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The Court observed that prima facie there was substantial imitation, and, in some cases, the photographs/images were identical or imitative. Thus, the Court issued notice to the defendants.
The matter would next be listed on 11-10-2023.
[Humans of Bombay Stories (P) Ltd. v. POI Social Media (P) Ltd., 2023 SCC OnLine Del 5945, Order dated 18-09-2023]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Plaintiff: Mr. Abhishek Malhotra, Ms. Shilpa Gamnani and Ms. Ishita Goel, Advocates
