Madras High Court refuses to restrain release of film director Bala’s Vanangaan

Madras High Court refuses to restrain release of Arun Vijay-starrer Vanangaan over title dispute, citing copyright law.

The Madras High Court on Friday refused to restrain renowned film director Bala’s B Studios and producer Suresh Kamatchi’s V House Productions from releasing the Arun Vijay-starrer Vanangaan following a dispute over the title of the Tamil movie.

Justice P. Velmurugan agreed with advocate Vijayan Subramanian, representing the two production houses, that the title of a movie could not be considered as a literary work and therefore the question of infringement of copyright would not arise at all.

“As per Section 13 of the Copyright Act, title is not a copyright. In this case, the applicant is not claiming the right for the entire work, he is claiming right only for the title. Under the above facts and circumstances, the applicant is not entitled to get the order of interim injunction,” the judge wrote.

He dismissed the applications filed by S. Saravanan, proprietor of Orange Productions, who claimed to have registered the title Vanangaan with the Film and Television Producers Guild of South India in 2020 itself and also renewed it periodically on payment of necessary charges.

On the other hand, Mr. Subramanian brought it to the notice of the court that Mr. Bala had announced the making of the movie titled Vanangaan in July 2022 itself and it was initially proposed to be produced by actor Suriya’s 2D Entertainment Private Limited.

After 2D Entertainment backed off due to certain disagreements, V House Productions came on board in 2023 and decided to produce the movie in association with B Studios. The shooting as well as post production of the movie was complete and it was ready for theatrical release.

Though the applicant was aware of all these developments since 2022, he had remained a mute spectator all along and had filed the present suit for copyright infringement and sought an interim injunction exactly when the film was about to be released, the counsel complained.