Copyright case against Rangoon

Mumbai, Feb 23: It may be a nail biting finish for Rangoon, the Kangana Ranaut-Saif Ali Khan-Shahid Kapoor starrer, in the Bombay high court ahead of its scheduled release date of February 24. Its director Vishal Bhardwaj is defending allegations that the film's swashbuckling 1940s movie star character is copyright violation of 'Fearless Nadia' a stunt actor of the 1930s and '40s.

A production house, Wadia Movietone Pvt. Ltd, has claimed that Miss Julia, the character of Ranaut, is based on real-life Australian stunt actor Mary Evans, better known globally as Fearless Nadia. The firm said it holds rights to all scripts, publicity material and posters for the Fearless Nadia films which it had produced. The Wadias' suit alleges that the makers of Rangoon have infringed on the copyrighted Fearless Nadia's characters, costumes, persona and even her signature phrase.

But seeking dismissal of the suit as being baseless, Bhardwaj's lead counsel Ravi Kadam argued on Wednesday that there is no copyright on historical characters and it is well known that in that era there were a large number of stunt women who would perform their own stunts. More importantly, he said that Fearless Nadia was the name of the actress and not a character in any of their films. The Wadia films "reflect the genre of the 1940s and not any individual", he said.

Justice K R Sriram, who is hearing the matter, will continue to hear Kadam at 10 am on Thursday. Earlier Wadia's counsel Navroz Seervai had argued how Bhardwaj, Nadiadwala Grandson, Viacom 18 Media, Sabrina Dhawan and others were in violation of the copyright law.

Dragged to the HC by Roy Wadia is also US-based award winning 73-year-old scriptwriter Mathew Robbins. As a co-scriptwriter of Rangoon, he denied all allegations and his reply said that the character of Julia is "based on independent research...where we discovered that in the year 1930s-40s numerous films were made by various production houses where female protagonist was a stunt woman, who would wear western clothes, would carry a weapon like a sword, pistol or whip and that 'Nadia' was just one of those several stunt actresses which featured in multiple films projecting empowered and strong women.''

His affidavit also said that the get up of stunt heroine Nadia herself in her films of yore were an "exact replica of the internationally well-known film character 'Zorro' with the eye-mask, whip and hat."

"The claim set up in favour of the late JBH Wadia is not only erroneous but incorrectly claims 'proprietary rights' over several 'features' which were not only common but which due to their use as part of the trend virtually are stock features used commonly by all film producers during the period of the 1930s to the late 40s,'' said the reply.

The defendants' case is also that the late JBH Wadia did nothing to seek to assert such rights by suits during the period against other film makers when the Fearless Nadia films, as per claims of Wadia, were at the very height of their popularity. The defendant said, "Wadia did nothing because he was aware that the film industry followed trends and that at the time swashbuckling, stunt woman characters."