ESPN Star had sought the court's direction to restrain various television news channels from airing footage of the ongoing India-Australia series without its permission, specially the footage of the second Test match that was mired byallegations of racism against cricketer Harbhajan Singh.
ESPN alleged that the news channels were running special shows on the cricket matches with excessive use of their footage and running commercials on these shows, thus earning considerable revenue.
The news channels, including CNN-IBN, IBN7, Aaj Tak, Star News, Zee News and NDTV 24X7, that were made a party in the case, contested that reporting on news events emerging out of cricket was the responsibility of news channels.
"The Copyright Act itself provides that reporting of current events does not constitute copyright infringement. The law therefore clearly grants a right to report current events even if rights to such events are vested with some one else," the news channels said in their defense.
According to the terms and conditions of ESPN, news channels are allowed to telecast cricket footage for only 30 seconds in a scheduled news bulletins and a total of 120 seconds of such footage a day. Any additional airing of the footage will not bewithout the consent of the sports broadcaster.
This move is likely to help news channels to show footage of international cricket matches for more than two minutes a day and run news stories on events involving cricketers in these matches.
When contacted, a senior ESPN executive said that the company was studying the Delhi High Court order and had no further comments to make in matter.
A senior Zee TV official who was representing Zee News in the case said, "Our case held on two accounts. One, the Harbhajan issue was a national issue and extended coverage of this was out of mass news interest. Second, Channel 9 of Australia is the producer of all cricket telecasts in Australia, and therefore should be made a party to the case. In the absence of their involvement, there was not much in the case."
ESPN had cited the example of Zee News which generated a programme titled 'Bucknor Tune Kya Kiya'. According to ESPN, the show unauthorisedly utilised 18 minutes 37 seconds of footage of the Test matches.
Other channels also aired similar programmes and ran advertisements during the programmes, which was a clear violation of ESPN's terms and conditions, the sports broadcaster said in its petition.
