Intellectual Property

Delhi High Court Grants Real-Time Relief Against Broadcast Infringement and Piracy

Case Title: Star India Private Limited vs. IPTV Smarter Pro and Ors. Forum: The Delhi High Court (High Court) Date of Order: May 29, 2025 [Read Order Here]

Background of the case The “Plaintiff”, Star India Private Limited, filed a suit against the defendants who were unauthorizedly streaming sports contents, including cricket matches, over which the Plaintiff exercised copyright ownership and broadcast reproduction rights. The Plaintiff initially instituted the suit against four defendants to permanently restrain them from the alleged illegal activities of infringing copyright and broadcast reproduction rights on their respective platforms, against which the Plaintiff has already secured a favourable ex parte temporary injunction. However, due to the continuous infringement of its intellectual property rights, the Plaintiff subsequently had to take action against further three mobile applications and sixteen rogue domains. Given the continuous nature of the infringement on various new platforms, the Plaintiff requested that “real-time blocking relief” be granted to protect the Plaintiff’s interests against any rogue platform that may be discovered during the course of the proceedings in this matter.

The Decision & Reasoning The High Court, while acknowledging the threat posed by the time sensitivity of certain infringement activities (in relation to intellectual property vested in live streaming of sports events) and the easy avenue by which such infringing activities can be conveniently committed, awarded the Plaintiff real- time relief against the rogue websites as well as rogue mobile applications and their associated domains that are to be discovered by the Plaintiff during the course of proceedings in the present matter. This relief, termed as ‘superlative injunction’ is an extension of dynamic injunction. Dynamic injunctions are aimed at blocking or takedown of the infringing content that is being featured across various domains and does not include platforms such as mobile applications. In this present matter, the relief is a superlative injunction because the High Court has not just awarded injunction against the rogue websites but also mobile applications. The baseline of the High Court’s reasoning is that the Plaintiff’s intellectual property rights must be protected against piracy in a time- bound manner and not be rendered ineffective by such organized acts of infringement.

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