No one can claim copyright over anti-Hindi agitations, Parasakthi producers tell Madras High Court

No individual can claim exclusive authorship, copyright, or proprietary rights over historical events, such as the anti-Hindi imposition agitations in Tamil Nadu in the past, the producer of Parasakthi, starring Siva Karthikeyan and others, has told the Madras High Court in response to a case alleging plagiarism.

The submission has been made in a counter affidavit filed before Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, who was seized of a case filed by script writer Varun Rajendran alias K.V. Rajendran who urged the court to prevent the release of Parasakthi on OTT and other platforms without giving due credit to him.

After watching the movie in theatre, the script writer had filed an application to prevent the release of the movie on OTT and other platforms. His counsel M. Purushothaman insisted that the producer give due credit to his client as the “writer and original conceptualiser” of the movie.

He said, the applicant had penned a script titled ‘Chemmozhi’ running to 56 pages and registered it with the South Indian Film Writers Association on January 27, 2010. He alleged that the same script had been used with some changes for the making of Parasakthi.

On the other hand, advocate Vijayan Subramanian, representing Dawn Pictures Private Limited, vehemently opposed the plea. He contended the film’s director Sudha Kongara was the script writer for Parasakthi and that she had drawn inspiration from the well-documented history of the anti-Hindi agitations.

“The narrative framework of the film consciously situates itself within these historical events only to lend authenticity and context to the period portrayed, while the characters, their interpersonal relationships, narrative arcs, motivations, dialogues, dramatic incidents, and emotional trajectories depicted in the film are entirely fictional. They are original creative expressions conceived independently by the director and the creative team,” he said.

Stating that the applicant seeks to equate similarity of theme or historical setting with copyright infringement, Mr. Subramanian contended it was impermissible in law since copyright protection does not extend to ideas, themes, historical events, social movements or facts, but only to the original expression of such ideas.

“The director has exercised her independent creative judgment in crafting a fictional cinematic work that merely uses a historical milieu as its canvas and it is a practice recognised for long. The applicant has filed this application on an erroneous assumption that exclusive rights can be claimed over historical events and real-life incidents,” he told the court.

He also accused the applicant of having taken out the application at the eleventh hour and said, Parasakthi was scheduled to be released on OTT on Saturday (February 7, 2026). Mr. Purushothaman, on his part, complained that the producer’s counter affidavit had been served upon him only an hour before the hearing of the case.

After hearing both sides, the judge simply adjourned the matter without any interim orders and said, the injunction application would be taken up for hearing on Monday (February 9, 2026).