The Madras High Court on Monday restrained Lyca Productions from using the Tamil title Karu with any other suffix or prefix for one of its upcoming movies. The interim injunction was granted on a civil suit preferred by film producer J. Manimaran of J.S. Screens who had been making a movie titled Karu since 2013.
Explaining the dispute between the parties, Justice M. Sundar said: “The central theme of the main suit and the instant application (for interim relief) is the ‘ Karu ’ title for a Tamil cinematographic film. Incidentally/ironically, ‘ Karu ’ in Tamil in the abstract/metaphysical sense translates to mean ‘theme.’ However, for a man of science, it translates to mean foetus.”
While the plaintiff had claimed to have registered the title with the Tamil Film Producers Council as well as Film and Television Producers Guild of South India and began making the movie with new faces about five years ago, Lyca Productions had begun its production only last year and was planning to release the movie shortly.
Though the production house took a stand before the court that it had titled its movie as ‘Lyca’s Karu,’ the judge, after perusing the advertisement materials of the movie, found that the term ‘Lyca’s’ was written in absolutely miniscule font size. “To my mind, it is infinitesimally small compared to the depiction of Karu ,” he said.
Finally, holding that release of two cinematographic films in the same language with same title in quick succession (two to three months), “which is almost simultaneous,” would certainly cause a sea of confusion, the judge said that the plaintiff was entitled to grant of an interim injunction as prayed for against the main defendant.
