Delhi High Court held that Lt. filmmaker Satyajit Ray was the first owner of the copyright for the screenplay of the 1966 Bengali film Nayak.

The single-headed bench of Justice C Hari Shankar emphasises Ray’s right to novelize the screenplay.

In the said matter, the decision of the Court came in response to a plea by the film’s producers, RDB and Co., seeking an injunction against HarperCollins, a publishing house, from releasing the novelization of the film’s screenplay.

However, the Court rejected the plea, stating that the assignment of novelization rights to Sandip Ray and the Satyajit Ray Society of Artists (SPSRA) was entirely lawful and in accordance with copyright legislation.

Before the Court, RDB submitted that Ray was commissioned by RD Bansal, the Karta of RDB & Co., to write the screenplay and direct the movie back in 1966, Nayak. 

They alleged that the novelization of the screenplay by Bhaskar Chattopadhyay and its subsequent publication by HarperCollins amounted to copyright infringement under Section 51 of the Copyright Act. 

After examining the whole matter, the Court held that, as the screenplay’s author, Ray was the original copyright holder. The court firmly rejected the argument that the producer automatically owns the copyright to the screenplay, stating that the contention lacked legal merit.

In light of these findings, Justice Hari Shankar concluded that the plaintiff had no legal right to seek an injunction against the defendant’s publication of the novelization of the film’s screenplay.