Pocket FM and Kuku FM, two large audiobook and podcast platforms, settled copyright disputes that they had been fighting in the Delhi High Court for months, according to court documents reviewed by The Hindu. The settlement was signed on December 16, 2022, but not reported previously.
The first suit arose when Pocket FM sued Kuku FM for publishing summaries of books for which the Hindi audio version rights were licensed exclusively to the former.
The other one came up when Kuku FM sued Pocket FM for publishing the audiobook version of a book on the Israeli Mossad intelligence service. In November, the Delhi High Court referred the disputes to its Mediation and Conciliation Centre, where Kuku FM agreed to take down the audiobook summaries, which it had previously defended as separate creative works that did not infringe on Pocket FM’s copyright.
Pocket FM removed the book, saying it acted in good faith assuming that it was in the public domain. Both parties agreed to drop the pending suits against each other and no longer filed fresh cases on the subject matter.
Kuku FM co-founder Vinod Kumar Meena had no immediate comment to offer when contacted by The Hindu.
Pocket FM celebrated the settlement as a victory. The firm’s legal counsel Sanchith Shivakumar said in a statement that “audiobook summaries actively lure users away from original/licensed works leading to a complete dilution of the copyright owner’s economic rights.”
