Television
Zee and JioStar lock horns again as copyright fight turns bitter
Reuters reported on 25 September that Zee seeks contempt after alleged breach of music injunction
MUMBAI: The courtroom is filling up with the same two names once more. Zee Entertainment has dragged JioStar back before the Delhi high court, accusing the Reliance-Disney giant of wilful disobedience after its songs kept turning up on rival screens.
Reuters reported on 25 September that Zee’s filing, dated 21 September, claims JioStar continued to use copyrighted music and songs in programmes despite a May injunction that barred any use, publish, broadcast, stream or upload of Zee’s licensed works. Zee lists six instances between May and July. The court has asked JioStar for a response. The next hearing is in December.
The original suit landed in April. Zee sought $3 million in damages for fifty alleged breaches after licensing deals expired. JioStar called the leftover clips unintentional and residual. It said it had already cleared a large volume of content once the agreements ran out. Zee is not convinced. The latest papers call the continued use illegal and active exploitation.
This legal skirmish sits inside a wider war of words. Zee founder Subhash Chandra has publicly accused Mukesh Ambani and his close aide Manoj Modi of spreading misinformation about the personal guarantees Chandra gave for loans that financial institutions extended to companies linked to the Essel group.
Chandra said media outlets connected to Reliance painted the National Company Law Tribunal case as if he had personally borrowed Rs 22,006 crore and then settled it for roughly Rs 6.5 crore. He insisted he was only a guarantor, never the borrower. The actual claims by objecting lenders, he said, stood far lower.
He named Ambani directly and warned that the campaign, which he linked to associates including Manoj Modi, must stop.
JioStar and the Reliance group denied the charge. They called the remarks baseless and said their media brands have never been used to attack anyone.
The two sides are already trading blows on other fronts. JioStar has challenged Zee over the unauthorised telecast of Bollywood films whose rights it claimed at the time. A London arbitration over a collapsed cricket deal still hangs in the air, with Reliance seeking $1 billion.
JioStar, created from the $8.5 billion merger of Reliance and Disney’s Indian media assets in 2024, dominates the market with a claimed 34.2 per cent television share and hundreds of millions of streaming users. Zee, one of India’s oldest broadcasters, sits at around 18 per cent with a music library of more than 19,450 songs.
Content rights once moved quietly between boardrooms. Now they end up in thick court files and public videos. December will show whether the music stays silent or the volume rises again.
