Madras High Court on Tuesday refused to stay the release of Tamil superstar Rajinikanth's 'Lingaa' as sought by a civil suit and further adjourned the case to December 12. When the civil suit by M/s Balaji Studios Private Limited, which claimed that the storyline of 'Lingaa' was in line with that of Telugu film 'Indra', came up for hearing, Justice R Subbiah refused to stay the release of 'Lingaa' and adjourned the matter to December 12.
Claiming that the storyline, dialogues, scene sequence and characters of 'Lingaa' was the infringement of 'Indra', for which it had the remake rights in Tamil, the petitioner company submitted that it was planning to remake the Telugu film in Tamil and the basic work for it was going on. The petitioner company contended that producers of 'Lingaa' "intentionally" adopted the main story base of the Telugu film and have also casted the same characters, scripted and arranged scene sequences.
The petitioner company further sought an interim direction restraining the release of 'Lingaa' and prayed for the appointment of an Advocate Commissioner to watch the film privately in the presence of its directors and submit a report to the Court. The director of 'Lingaa' K S Ravikumar, in his counter affidavit stated that he had no knowledge of the story line of the Telugu film and submitted that the story line, dialogues, scene sequences and characters casted in 'Indra' have not been infringed, adopted or copied in the film 'Linga' and prayed to dismiss the suit.
The Madurai bench of the High Court had on December three dismissed a similar plea by Ravi Rathinam, a film maker, saying merits of the rival claims made by both parties that they owned the story cannot be investigated in summary proceedings in a writ petition. Ravi Rathinam had alleged then that the storyline of "Lingaa" was same as that of his 2013 movie "Mullai Vanam 999". Ravikumar and screenplay writer S Ponkumaran argued then that the petitioner had not published his story anywhere till date. Hence Ravi Rathinam could not claim copyright for one which was unpublished.
