Supreme Court stays copyright case over music in seven films including Salangai Oli

The Supreme Court has stayed an order that had revived an injunction claim against Saregama India Limited in a long-running copyright dispute with Sreedevi Video Corporation over the music in several South Indian films, including classics such as Kamal Haasan-starrer Salangai Oli and Shankarabaranam. (Saregama Vs Sreedevi Video Corporation)

The dispute centres on competing claims to audio copyrights in the sound recordings of seven films - Salangai Oli, Saagara Sangamam (Telugu), Sankara Bharanam, Seetha Kokila Chiluka, Sithara, Saagara Sangamam (Malayalam) and Thayaramma Bangariah.

On February 26, a Bench of Justices Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan passed an order staying the Madras High Court November 2025 decision to revive the case on certain limited questions.

Sreedevi Video Corporation had filed a commercial suit in 2014 seeking a declaration that it was the absolute owner of the audio copyrights in the sound recordings of the seven films based on two assignment agreements executed in July 2008 with Poornodaya Movie Creations and Poornodaya Art Creations.

It also sought a permanent injunction restraining Saregama from exploiting the recordings.

Saregama opposed the suit, contending that the copyrights had already been assigned decades earlier. According to the company, agreements executed in 1978 and 1979 transferred recording and mechanical reproduction rights in the films to Sea Records for 60 years. Those rights were later assigned to Saregama (then Gramophone Company of India Ltd.) in 2000 for ₹1.10 crore in perpetuity.

Saregama also relied on a cease-and-desist notice issued in 2010 asserting its copyright and disputing Sreedevi Video Corporation's claim.

A Single Judge of the High Court dismissed the Sreedevi Video Corporation's copyright suit in 2022, holding that the claim seeking a declaration of copyright ownership was barred by limitation because the right to sue had arisen in 2010, but the suit was filed only in 2014, beyond the three-year limitation period.

On appeal, a Division Bench agreed that the claim over the declaration of title over the sound recordings was time-barred.

However, it allowed the case to proceed on the limited question of whether an injunction could still be granted against Saregama, effectively reviving the suit to that extent.

Before the Supreme Court, Saregama contended that the Division Bench committed a fundamental legal error by delinking the injunction claim from the declaratory relief.

It argued that the suit was fundamentally a title dispute over copyright ownership. According to Saregama, once the declaration of ownership was held to be barred by limitation, Sreedevi Video Corporation could not be permitted to pursue an injunction, which was only a consequential relief dependent on establishing title.

The plea emphasised that where title is disputed, an injunction cannot be granted without first determining ownership. Allowing the injunction claim to proceed, it argued, would effectively permit Sreedevi Video Corporation to do indirectly what it cannot do directly - establish title to copyrights despite the declaration claim being time-barred, argued Saregama.

Saregama further argued that the Division Bench itself had recognised the declaration claim as time-barred but nevertheless allowed the injunction claim to continue by drawing an artificial distinction between dismissal on merits and dismissal on limitation. According to the plea, such a distinction was legally unsustainable because once the right to seek a title declaration had been lost by limitation, no enforceable right survived to seek an injunction.

The company also argued that the 2008 assignment relied upon by Sreedevi Video Corporation to claim copyright was invalid because the assignors had already transferred the rights decades earlier to Saregama's predecessor in interest, and therefore had no authority to assign the same copyrights again. It submitted that permitting the injunction claim to proceed would reopen the question of title and re-litigate an issue already barred by limitation.

The Supreme Court has now stayed the operation of the High Court order reviving the injunction claim, halting further proceedings in the case for the time being.

The matter will be heard next in April 2026.

Saregama was represented by Senior Advocate Amit Sibal with Advocates Aparajitha Vishwanath, Vishnu Sharma AS, Lzafeer Ahmad, Ribhav Pande, Jeevan Hari and Saksham Dhingra.

[Read Order]