The Madras High Court on Thursday granted interim injunction until further orders, restraining internet service providers (ISPs) and other unknown persons from infringing on the producer's copyright of the Dhanush-starrer ‘3' by communicating, duplicating or downloading the film in any manner without proper licence.

The film is scheduled for release on March 30.

Justice K.B.K. Vasuki passed the order on an application in a civil suit by R.K. Productions Private Ltd, the producer, and ordered notice. The court posted the matter for further hearing on April 18.

It permitted the applicant to publish the injunction order in Tamil and English newspapers so as to make all concerned aware of it.

The applicant, represented by L.H. Harish Ram of T. Nagar here, the authorised signatory, said that the production house's latest venture was ‘3', directed by Aishwarya R. Dhanush, starring Dhanush and Shruthi Hassan as lead actors. It was produced on a budget of approximately Rs.22 crore and produced simultaneously in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. The film is known for its promotional song ‘Why this kolaveri di'.

Mr. Ram said that video piracy and unauthorised downloads always played havoc for the production company in view of the returns the motion picture was expected to give.

Various websites and web pages hosted by various persons across the world were involved in recording, camcording and reproducing cinematographic films screened in theatres and then copying them to various medium, including CDs, DVDS, VCDs, blu-ray discs, computer hard drives and pen drives for being sold at meagre sum to the general public unauthorisedly.

A few other persons also uploaded such illegally recorded motion pictures to the internet, thereby allowing the general public to download them free any number of times and watch them. Such activities caused heavy loss and damage to production houses. Web pages and websites had links, which were multifarious.

The applicant was the first owner of the copyright of the film. The producer apprehended that as and when its film was released in theatres, acts of piracy would also commence. Such acts would cause serious loss to the applicant's business.

The service providers had not entered into any licence agreement with the producer in respect of communication of the applicant's cinematograph film or any part including photographs, musical notations, any musical recordings, dialogues, lyrics, story or screen play, the applicant said.