Creativity and entertainment are inter-linked. In the initial days of making of movies, creativity was being praised and encouraged as it entertained the public. From creativity being the hero of the picture, it has gradually shifted towards entertainment only. Today, the film-makers have shifted from “originality” to “duplication”. Most movies we see these days are either biographical pictures or translations from other languages.

In order to stay a distance away from the blame of copying, they change only certain scenes or alter certain portions and put up the same storyline. In many situations, such films are passed of with the excuse of the word “inspiration”.

In 2010, for the first time, a successful suit was filed by Twentieth Century against Sohail Maklai Entertainment for the unlawful remake of Twentieth Century’s 2002 thriller Phone Booth, into Knock Out[1]. This led to the first ruling of an Indian Court where Bollywood was blamed for infringing a Hollywood copyright and Twentieth Century was awarded an injunctive relief.

Apart from just Hollywood, Bollywood has also been drenched with spots of allegations within India for copying south Indian movies in order to make their scripts. The widely known concept here lies with public acceptance and less risk. The film-makers do not intend to take risk which is why they remake those movies which are already loved by a particular portion of public. The greater disappointment is that this method of making movies doesn’t seem to stop. Hence, it gives a faint idea of the overuse of the safe harbor given in Section 52 of the Copyright Act dealing with ‘fair use’.

[1] “A Dearth of Originality and Copyright Infringement in Bollywood”, available at <http://lawquestinternational.com/dearth-originality-and-copyright-infringement-bollywood&gt;