This post was first published on 11th August, 2014.
This post brings to a conclusion, the series on Protecting Ideas, Concepts, Scripts and Stories in the Entertainment Industry.
Researchers have analyzed three cases on Confidentiality and its breach in the case of Intellectual Property Rights namely in the Urmi Juvekar Chiang case, the Zee Telefilms case and the Anil Gupta vs. Kunal Dasgupta case. The facts of the cases are similar, namely that all three have Plaintiffs that are companies or people who have made the creative concept of a television programme and shown the concept to a certain television channel, which, after first rejecting the ideas has later begun to broadcast programmes based on the aforesaid concepts without the required permission of the Plaintiffs.
The Plaintiffs alleged, in each of these cases, that the Defendants had thus committed a breach of the confidence that was reposed in them in that the Plaintiff had confided their creative ideas in the Defendants. In all three cases, as all facts pointed towards the borrowing of a concept or an idea, the Courts decided in the Plaintiff’s favor.
The Courts’ position on these kinds of cases is that borrowing an idea or concept without permission constitutes a Breach of Confidentiality. The Courts’ ruling has said that this Right to Confidentiality is vested in the Right to Privacy taught by the Indian constitution. In our view, this represents a very positive development as it explicitly stops somebody using somebody else’s creative idea without their express permission. This is a positive social development because if any individual approaches somebody with a creative idea and his confidence is violated, then the individual is given a way to beget justice which is the actual aim of the tort – to ensure that a victim gets compensation for a loss which can only happen if a legal injury exists.
In India, there has been growing awareness about confidentiality in the recent years. Breach of Confidence, in India, is based upon the violation of the Right to Privacy. There is indeed a close, nebulous relationship between the violation of the Right to Privacy and Breach of Confidence when the information in question is private and/or personal information.
