The next edition of the IPL is still a few weeks away, but off the field, tensions are rising for the Chennai Super Kings. On Friday, the Sun TV Network Limited, which owns the Sunrisers Hyderabad franchise, filed a copyright infringement suit in the Madras High Court against the Chennai Super Kings for using background tracks, songs, and dialogues from Rajnikanth-starrer jailer, jailer 2, and coolie in their promotional content on its social media venues.
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On March 1, CSK put out a promotional video to unveil their new jersey for the upcoming season. The team had used dialogues, background tracks, and songs from Rajnikanth movies.
The video went viral instantly, but it was taken down and released a day later with modifications in the audio. While speculation has been rife about the reasons, as the franchise usually aims at Tamil movie songs for its content on social media, the answer arrived on Friday when the Sun TV network approached the Madras High Court.
Sun TV Network Limited marked that jailer, coolie, and jailer 2 were its production and music composer Anirudh Ravichander had mainly, by way of a written agreement, given all rights for exploitation of the music to the film production firm.
As per the Indian Express, Sun Network Limited also said to the court’s notice that each jersey was sold for Rs 2,399 and the plaintiff’s copyrights were used for making commercial gains without authorization.
Moreover, the applicant submits that the promotional videos mischievously exploited the applicant’s copyrighted works to help the sales of the 2026 match jersey at Rs 2399 and other merchandise.
In addition, as per reports, the plaintiff has asked the court to stop CSK Limited from using its copyrighted content without permission. Moreover, it has also asked CSK to offer details of how much money the franchise earned by using this content illegally.
At the start, CSK had used movie soundtracks and dialogues on its social media posts. After the issue came up, the franchise stopped using such audio in its content.
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Currently, the issue is only with CSK, but social media teams of other IPL teams are closely watching what happens next. Various teams have used movie soundtracks in their posts before, but this is the first time a franchise has been taken to court by a production firm for copyright violation.
After this case, some teams have told their content teams to be more careful and avoid using movie soundtracks without proper permission. In addition, a source said that earlier, when they used such audio, they used to offer credit to the production houses. As per copyright rules, even giving credit does not stop it from being considered a violation.