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IP News Bulletin

Copyright battle over scare provoking techniques

If one wishes to make money by scaring people, he must design a unique approach and cannot replicate other people's techniques.


Last Monday, Justice A P Thaker temporarily halted the operation of N Venkta Yayadri Rao's Terrific Devil Zone theme park in Mangalore, which aims to delight visitors by terrifying them with supernatural events. After the trademark owners of Scary House and Horror House sued him for copyright violations, the high court ordered Rao to stop doing business.


The Gujarat high court has temporarily halted the operation of the theme park in Karnataka, where he has built a haunted house with a walk through that leads tourists to encounter the dead, ghosts, skeletons, and skulls hanging from roof tops.


Crazy Concepts & Mazes Pvt Ltd and MY Shilpy, the owners of Horror House, have accused Rao, an ex-employee of both these companies, of copyright breaches. According to the firms, a horror drama was composed in 2004 and then turned into a production called Scary House, which featured creative, literary, musical, drama, sculpture, artwork, pictures, and lightings.


Scary House and Horror House were given trademarks. The firms also own the theme's copyrights. A Horror House may be found in Kankaria, and a Scary House can be found in an Ahmedabad mall. The companies filed a complaint with the municipal civil court, alleging that Rao's Terrific Devil Zone had duplicated the theme and artworks, which were copyrighted. Rao has simply changed his name, but he has adopted the plaintiff companies' artwork, and the plaintiffs are requesting that the court permanently prohibit Rao from utilising the copyrighted theme and artwork. He is free to make his own horror theme, but not the copyrighted one.



An interim injunction was also sought, but it was denied by the civil court in 2017, citing the fact that the copyrights expired in 2011.

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