Every story has a writer who writes it either with the help of imagination or with all the personal experiences. When a person writes something incontinently it becomes intellectual property of that particular person unless he is infringing anyone else’s intellectual property. The literary work is protected under the Copyright Act, 1957. In Section 13 of Copyright Act, 1957 it is given that, any original literary, dramatic, artistic work can be copyrighted under intellectual property.

          Every typical Marathi person knows Mr. P. L. Deshpande as he is one of the most famous writers in Maharashtra. He is very well known for his humour and his excellent command over the language. He is not only an author but also an actor, composer, musician, and singer.

           On Mr. P. L. Deshpande’s death all the copyrights to his work were with his wife Sunita. Later, when she passed away the ownership of the rights of the PuLa’s work to IUCAA (Inter- University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics). In the year of 2018 IUCAA sent a legal notice to Sony SAB TV and the producers of the serial Dashami Creation for infringement of copyrights. It was sent in context with their TV serial ‘Namune’. This serial was based on the characters from the book ‘vyakti aani valli’ by P.L. Deshpande.  In the notice IUCAA has demanded SONY Group and the producers of the serial a public apology accepting the illegal act of copyright infringement and also compensation of Rs. 50, 00,000 and also prohibition on telecasting the further episodes. If they fail to do so then they will file a criminal case.

CONCLUSION:

When any literary work is concerned, the rights of author or any artist should remain with them or with the people whom the authority is given. If somebody wants to use the work for creating something else with the help of the existing work then that party must take permission from the artist or the authoritative person. Without permission using the work is infringement of the copyright. The period for the copyright is lifetime of the artist and 60 years after his death. As the period is not extending in the above stated case therefore, they have clearly infringed the copyrights of the author. Here, Nitin Vaidya of ‘Dashami Creations’, said that have received the notice and his legal team has responded saying, that my legal team has received the notice and they have already replied.

BY

SHRUTI TOPKAR

BA-LLB – 5th Year

Marathwada Mitra Mandal’s Shankar Rao Chavan Law College