Madras High Court bars use of Ilaiyaraaja’s songs in movie ‘Dude’

The Madras High Court, on Friday (November 28, 2025), restrained Hyderabad-based Mythri Movie Makers from continuing to exhibit the Tamil movie Dude, starring Pradeep Ranganathan and Mamitha Baiju, along with the songs ‘Nooru Varusham’ and ‘Karutha Machan’ that were composed by acclaimed musician R. Ilaiyaraaja for other movies in the past.

Justice N. Senthilkumar said, the musician, in his civil suit, had made out a prima facie case of his songs having been mutilated and distorted thereby causing damage to his reputation and therefore, the balance of convenience was in favour of granting an interim injunction, as sought for by him, until further orders could be passed on the civil suit.

After the judge pronounced his orders, that were reserved on Wednesday (November 26, 2025), senior counsel P.V. Balasubramaniam, representing Mythri Movie Makers, urged the judge to grant seven days’ time for the production firm to comply with the interim injunction order. The counsel said the firm would require sometime to take down the two songs.

Pointing out the movie was now being exhibited on an OTT platform, after completing its theaterical run, the senior counsel said, the production firm would face the threat of having committed contempt of court if it does not comply with the interim injunction order forthwith. He urged the court to grant just a week’s time for the production firm to remove the songs.

However, Justice Senthilkumar refused to accept the submission and said, no such time could be granted when the plaintiff had made out a prima facie case for grant of injunction. He said, the court order would have to be complied with fortwith especially when it had been demonstrated before the court that the two songs had been mutilated and distorted without the plaintiff’s consent.

In his civil suit, Mr. Ilaiyaraaja had sought a permanent injunction and a mandatory injunction directing the production house to immediately take down all unauthorised content related to his copyright works from the movie Dude and also disclose the profits derived so far by wrongful exploitation of the two songs, which he had composed long back, in the new movie.

Senior counsel S. Prabakaran, representing the composer, had argued the defendant Mythri Movie Makers was in the habit of using the songs composed by the plaintiff in its movies without seeking the musician’s permission. He said, the same production house had used four of his client’s songs in Ajith Kumar-starrer Good Bad Ugly (GBU) forcing his client to obtain an interim injunction against that movie too.

He said the production house had once again used two other songs of Mr. Ilaiyaraaja in its latest movie Dude without obtaining his express permission. Countering the submissions, Mr. Balasubramaniam had told the court that his client had obtained the rights for using those two songs from popular music label Sony Music, which was now holding the copyright for both the songs.

Stating Mr. Ilaiyarajaa had composed those two songs before certain amendments were made to the Copyright Act of 1957, he said, as per the pre-amended provisions, the first owner of the copyright was only the producer of the movies for which Mr. Ilaiyaraaja had composed the two songs, ‘Nooru Varusham’ and ‘Karutha Machan’, and those producers had sold the rights to Sony Music.