The entertainment giant, Yash Raj Film (YRF) has dragged Triller, INC to the Delhi High court where the jurisdiction lies, in a Civil Commercial suit, alleging that the platform of the defendant (Triller) uses an extraction tool, which makes available the Plaintiff’s copyright works to its users for uploading of audio-visual content/short videos, stores, reproduces, makes copies, creates new works embodying the plaintiff’s copyright works, commercially exploits, communicates to the public, modifies, synchronizes and/or otherwise exploits or permits the aforesaid acts by the users of the defendant’s platform, without a valid license from the plaintiff.
YRF apprised the court of several legal notices being issued on Triller before approaching the Hon'ble Court. However, even after the receipt of several notices and the warnings issued, certain links remained to be active by Triller.
On the other hand, it is pleaded on behalf of Triller that it uses the "safe -habour" mode, this plea in turn was countered by YRF stating that Triller contains various features, such as the audio extraction feature, being beyond the limited role of an intermediary specified under Section 79 (2)(a) of the IT Act. Hence, Triller as a platform is disentitled from the 'safe-harbour' protection guaranteed to intermediaries under the IT Act.
The Hon'ble bench of Justice Amit Bansal allowed the plaint to be registered as a suit, Issued summons in the suit and notice in the application under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (CPC) and directed the parties to file all original documents in support of their respective claims along with their respective pleadings. In case parties are placing reliance on a document, which is not in their power and possession, its detail and source shall be mentioned in the list of reliance, which shall be also filed with the pleadings.