Court orders are not suggestions: Bombay High Court pulls up defendants for not complying with orders

In two separate IPR cases, Justice Gautam Patel of the Bombay High Court recently pulled up the defendants for flouting the orders of the Court as well as undertakings given to the Court. .Justice Patel came across two cases in two days pertaining to infringement of intellectual property rights, wherein the defendants had failed to comply with the orders. The Court proceeded to grant interim relief in favour of the plaintiffs. "The Defendants must learn that Court orders are not suggestions. They are to be obeyed in every single respect." Justice Patel emphasised in one of the orders. .Case of flouting undertaking given to Court.The plaintiff, Narendra Hirawat & Co, had moved against Aftab Music Industries for terminating a Deed of Assignment granting copyright in perpetuity to over 20 feature films in favour of the former.After the suit was filed in the High Court in 2012, Aftab and Hirawat submitted consent terms where Aftab had agreed to certain conditions which were accepted by the Court, after which the suits had been disposed of..However, by way of interim applications, Hirawat moved the High Court against the non-compliance of the consent terms by Aftab Music..Justice Patel opined in his order of Tuesday that not only should the interim application be made absolute, but "the Suit should be decreed including exemplary and punitive costs and a contempt notice" against Aftab Music. .The strict observations came from Justice Patel for the reason that, "The Defendants are today acting in wilful and deliberate breach of an undertaking and acknowledgement they gave in writing to this Court in Consent Terms as far back as in 2012 and which were made orders of this Court.".It was further observed,"The right to a reply does not inure to a Defendant who is dishonest and is entirely unmindful of commitments made to this Court. If there has been change of circumstances by which the Defendants expected to be relieved from undertakings made to this Court then it was expected of the Defendants that it would apply to this Court for a suitable order.".The Court also noted that the defendants were showing as many as twenty films, all covered by the Deeds of Assignment, on their YouTube channel. They falsely claimed that they never gave the plaintiffs “YouTube rights.” Taking a dim view of this "nonsensical" argument, the Court held,"There is no separate concept “YouTube rights” any more than there is a concept of “Netflix rights”, “Disney Hotstar rights”, “Amazon Prime” rights or the like. A long, long time ago, there was an internet without YouTube. But there was never YouTube without the internet. Hard as it may be for these Defendants to believe, YouTube cannot run as YouTube without the internet. The Defendants cannot possibly explain how YouTube exists independent of the internet...".Justice Patel thus passed an ad-interim order immediately restraining Aftab Music from infringing upon Hirawat's exclusive copyright of the said films..Hirawat was represented by Advocate Hiren Kamod briefed by Bar & Brief Attorneys. Aftab Music was represented by Advocate Bhagyashree Keny..Case of non-compliance of order passed by Court.Justice Patel also heard a case filed by Parle Agro pertaining to trademark infringement of its mark - APPY FIZZ - by SG Star Drinks. In its order in this case, the Court noted at the outset,"This is the second such case in two days. Like the previous case, this Defendant does not believe that orders of the Court have any meaning and that can continue to flout them at will. It will learn that it is entirely wrong."By an order of August 10, Justice Patel had granted an ex-parte ad-interim injunction against SG Star by observing that there was prima facie infringement of the mark. In that order, there was also a specific finding that Parle had registered its unique black bottle with a yellow-gold beck-band, against the infringement of which injunction was granted. .However, when the court receiver went to execute the order, it came across another infringement pertaining to the bottle used by SG Star which was similar to Parle's Appy bottle. "The defendant does not believe that the orders of the Court have any meaning and that can continue to flout them at will. It will learn that it is entirely wrong," Justice Patel said..He granted further injunction on using a bottle which may be deceptively or confusingly similar to Appy's bottle. The court receiver was also directed to seize all the goods and keep them at a location identified by Parle. .The Court also put SG Star to notice, forewarning that if it does not have a legitimate defence to this action, there will be significant order of costs. .Parle was represented by Kamod, who was briefed by Gajria & Co. and SG Star was represented by SMA Law Partners..[Read orders]