Shahrukh film hit by copyright row

Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan’s dream project Ra.One has been dragged into the Bombay High Court over an allegation of copyright violation by television producer Yash Patnaik.The TV producer alleges that the writers of Ra.One stole the idea from a story he developed in 2006.Patnaik had recently moved the Bombay High Court (BHC), demanding that he be given the credit for the film’s concept, or be given 10% of the film’s profits.Patnaik’s lawyer Ravi Kadam argued that the superhero of Ra.One is similar in attributes and appearance to the superhero of Patnaik’s story.“The super-villain of Patnaik’s script was called ‘One’, which has been used by Shahrukh in the movie’s title,” Kadam claimed.On the other hand, Shahrukh’s lawyer, senior advocate Virendra Tulzapurkar argued that the script of Ra.One was completely different and original.Keeping the final decision in the case pending, the court has asked the makers of Ra.One to deposit a sum of Rs10mn by today. “The defendants (Red Chillies Entertainment and Eros Entertainment) are directed to deposit a sum of Rs10mn as pay-order to the court and then release the movie,” the division bench of chief justice Mohit Shah and justice Roshan Dalvi reportedly said.The court observed: “It is the most unfortunate part of the film industry that people use others’ concepts and then don’t want to pay or give them credit.”The court observed that prima facie there has been a case of copyright violation.Meanwhile Shahrukh, who is on a marketing spree for his mega-budget production, has tied up with homeshopping channel HomeShop18 to sell the superhero film’s merchandise.