Delhi court hears ‘Hari Puttar’ defense
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?What’s in a name? Not all that much, the producers of “Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors” argued Friday in the Delhi High Court.
Mumbai-based Mirchi Movies counsel told Judge Reva Khetrapal that Warner Bros.’ copyright infringement suit here is essentially a case of judging a book by its cover.
In his deposition, Arun Jaitley — a well-known Indian politician and attorney — argued that the “phonetic similarity” between the Bollywood title and Warner Bros.’ “Harry Potter” fails to constitute a copyright violation, arguing that one needs to “look at the spelling, pronunciation, context, language and relevance of words in (the) language.”
“Puttar” means “son” in Punjabi, and the Indian film’s main character is a boy named Hari Prasad Dhoonda, whom the father refers to as Hari Puttar.
Just “because somebody may mispronounce ‘Hari Puttar’ as ‘Harry Potter’ or even ‘Jaikishan’ (a common Hindu name) as ‘Jackson,’ that alone cannot be cause for legal action,” Jaitley said, who pointed out that the word “Puttar” was used several times in Gurinder Chadha’s “Bend It Like Beckham.”
- from THR