A case has been filed by American Rights Management Company against Vipul Shah’s Singh is Kinng on grounds of copyright infringement. This comes two years after the films theatrical release.
The comedy film starred Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif with a musical score by US rapper, Snoop Dogg.
Filed in New York District Court, the lawsuit claims that the movie has been ‘derived’ from Daman Runyon’s short story, Madame La Gimp (1929). It also states that the film was ‘derived’ from Lady for a Day, A Pocket Full of Miracles and Miracles, all of which are derivatives of the original Madame La Gimp story.
Commenting on the issue, Vipul Shah says that he has seen A Pocketful of Miracles and another film based on the story and sees no relevance between the two. He went on to say that the script and story of the film was written by Anees Bazmee who is currently shooting in Canada. “Once he is back, we will sit on this topic and see what course of action is best taken. Till then it will be with our legal department,” he added.
In the past, Bollywood has produced various remakes of Hollywood films, sometimes with identical plots and characters to its original versions. Recently, with Hollywood studios signing Indian releases, there have been a number of warnings about plagiarism.
In 2008, the Indian film, Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Errors was taken to court by Warner Bros, the copyright holders of the Harry Potter movies on the grounds that the Indian film title was too similar to the Hollywood one. Although the case was dismissed, there were reports of the film having a similar theme to Home Alone, which starred Macaulay Culkin.
