Soumen Sen, J. - (1.) The petitioner has filed a suit alleging infringement of its copyright as well as realization of the arrears licence fees. The petitioner refers to an agreement of 13th July, 2015 by which the petitioner granted to the respondents a limited non-transferable and non-exclusive license to publish and exploit the contract work forming part of the agreement. Under the said agreement, the respondent no.1 would pay to the petitioner a minimum guarantee amount of Rs.9.50 crores and a streaming fee of Rs.0.14 per stream in case the value of utilization of the petitioner's works exceeded the minimum guarantee amount named in the agreement. The petitioner would also provide a link to the respondent no.1 by which 100% delivery of the content of the petitioner's copyrighted work could be accessed by the respondents. Timely reporting and payment shall be the essence of the agreement. The agreement also contains a termination clause in Clause 2A. The petitioner was entitled to terminate the agreement by issuing a seven days' notice. On expiry or earlier termination of the agreement, the respondents shall cease and desist from using and exploiting the licensed content and shall ensure that all copies are permanently removed from the systems, servers, storages and/or devices stored or displayed by the respondents. There is no dispute that the agreement stood terminated by efflux of time. However, there are disputes with regard to the liability to be discharged by the respondent no.1 under the agreement. The respondents at this stage possibly cannot dispute that invoices were raised on the respondent no.1 and some payments have been made by the respondent no.1. There have been delayed payments of the instalments under the agreement.
(2.) Mr. Pratap Chatterjee, learned senior counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner has referred to various correspondences and electronic mails exchanged by and between the parties to show that demands were made from time to time to make timely payment of the instalment amounts. The plaintiff alleged that notwithstanding such notice of demand, the respondents have neither paid it nor they have stopped using and exploiting the petitioner's songs. The petitioner has referred to various newspaper reports to show that the respondent no.1 and 2 are in the process of selling their business to third parties, namely, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix. The respondent nos.1 and 2 are foreign companies and are based outside India. In the event the said respondents are allowed to sell their business, the petitioner would suffer irreparable loss and prejudice. On such grounds, the petitioner has prayed for injunction and furnishing of security to the extent of its claim aggregating to Rs.6,12,50,000/-.
(3.) The respondents are represented.;