On Friday, May 30th 2008 Hon'ble Delhi High Court issued notice to Yahoo Inc. and its Indian subsidiary Yahoo Web Services (India) Pvt. Ltd on a suit filed by Super Cassettes Industries Limited (SCIL) owner of the largest Indian music label "T-Series" for infringement of their copyright caused by unlicensed streaming of SCIL's copyright works on Yahoo's portal 'www.video.yahoo.com'.
Early this year a number of music videos whereof the copyright and publishing rights are owned and controlled by T-Series were located on Yahoo's Website. A cease and desist notice was sent to Yahoo along with a sample list of infringing works and they were asked to remove all the contents that were owned by T-Series.
In response to the legal notice, Yahoo Inc. reverted with their standard reply taking refuge under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) an American Law and asked T-Series to notify Yahoo in accordance with DMCA.
In March end this year another reminder notices were sent to both Yahoo Inc and Yahoo India pointing out that the contents that were pointed out earlier were still not removed despite a legal notice and also additional contents were located on Yahoo copyright of which is owned by T-Series. An additional list of infringing material was sent to Yahoo. However, Yahoo chose to ignore and did not comply with the notices.
T-Series was then compelled to move the Hon'ble High Court of Delhi to protect its copyright. Alongwith issuing notice to Yahoo, Hon'ble High Court also passed an interim-injuction against Yahoo and specifically ordered that Yahoo, its officers, agents, servants and representatives are restrained from reproducing, adapting, distributing or transmitting in any manner on their website 'www.video.yahoo.com' or otherwise infringing in any manner the [copyright of T-Series in films and songs and underlying copyright works without obtaining an appropriate license from T-Series.
Unlicensed streaming/hosting of copyright works by sharing websites have become a menace and causing rank infringement of copyrigh works. Last year T-Series had filed a case against YouTube.com and its parent company Google Inc. for similar infringement. T-series was also successful in obtaining an interim restraint against YouTube and Google.
While the case for Google is coming up for hearing in July, the Yahoo case has been posted for end September.
