‘Yes, I am above everybody’: Ilaiyaraaja’s counsel, while opposing case filed by Echo Recording at Madras High Court

Legal battle over music rights in Chennai as composer Ilaiyaraaja asserts 'special, moral right' over 4,500 songs.

“Yes, I am above everybody,” retorted acclaimed music composer R. Ilaiyaraaja’s counsel on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, while opposing an appeal filed by Echo Recording Company Private Limited before the Madras High Court, against a single judge’s 2019 order recognising his ‘special, moral right’ over 4,500 songs composed by him for more than 1,000 movies between the 1970s and 1990s.

When the appeal was listed before Justices R. Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq, senior counsel Vijay Narayan, representing the appellant, said, the single judge had erred in interpreting the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957. He said, the judge had permitted the composer to exploit his songs, though such a right had not been contemplated under Section 57.

Mr. Narayan said music composers in the film industry in India lost all their rights, except for the right to receive royalty, once they received remuneration from a film producer for a particular movie. Therefore, whether Mr. Ilaiyarajaa would fall under the definition of ‘author’ under the Copyright Act was itself a question to be decided in the appeal, he said.

The senior counsel also said, Echo Recording had purchased the rights for around 4,500 songs from the producers of the movies concerned and had been exploiting them commercially until the composer filed a civil suit before the High Court in 2014, seeking a permanent injunction against the recording companies and obtained a decree from the single judge on June 4, 2019.

Though the judge had permitted Echo Recording too, to commercially exploit the 4,500 songs strictly in the form and manner as contained in the cinematograph films without making any distortion or mutilation to them, the composer then filed an appeal against that portion of the order and obtained an interim stay against it from a Division Bench of Justices M. Duraiswamy and T.V. Thamilselvi in February 2022.

Utilising the other portion in which his ‘special, moral right’ had been recognised, “he [Mr. Ilaiyaraaja] has now given licence to popular music streaming platform Spotify to use those 4,500 songs for which I [Echo Recording] hold the rights. He is now getting royalty from me and money from Spotify also for the same songs. Apple Music and Amazon Music have stayed away because they are very careful when it comes to litigation,” Mr. Narayan said.

Mr. Narayan also told the Division Bench that the single judge had considered the present stature of Mr. Ilaiyaraaja being a musical genius while recognising his ‘special, moral right’ over his musical works and failed to note that the songs for which Echo Recording holds rights were composed by him when he was only a “budding musical genius” and did not hold the massive stature that he holds now.