On an overall assessment and appreciation of the clauses of all the agreements, the Court found that the plaintiff had made out a strong prima facie case in its favour. The court took an exception to Saregama's conduct of not tendering copies of the earlier agreements to Shemaroo or the court in advance. Significantly, the third and final agreement cited by Saregama was signed in 2019 after Shemaroo's 2011 agreement. The court found that the 19 agreements cited by Saregama prima facie related to recordings of performances of musical nature and sound tracks. He also argued that Shemaroo had waited till the eleventh hour to approach the high court. Senior Advocate Venkatesh Dhond for Saregama submitted that they had acquired rights from Gamaphone Company, with whom the producer had signed an agreement in 1982, adding that Shemaroo's 2011 agreement was only for making of a film, not for a musical or drama. Senior Advocate Birendra Saraf assisted by Rashmin Khandekar submitted that all rights had been assigned to Shemaroo, including theatrical rights. Responding to a legal notice earlier this month, Saregama said the musical was to be performed in March 2020 itself and was being advertised since 2019 therefore there was no substance in the notice. It also learned that the musical was based on the film, the rights for which Shemaroo held. Shemaroo's counsels argued that it came across the preview of a stage play titled 'Disco Dancer – The Musical' on the social networking platform Instagram. Shemaroo claimed that Subhash assigned the rights of 12 of his films to it, Disco Dancer being one of them. Shemaroo filed a suit and an application seeking interim relief claiming rights in the Mithun Chakraborty starrer 'Disco Dancer' as per agreement dated November 11, 2011. "Prima facie, it appears that when defendant No.3 (B Subhash) had already assigned all rights, including intellectual property rights, theatrical rights and other such rights pertaining to the said film in favour of the plaintiff, any such subsequent agreements executed by defendant No.3, claiming to assign adaptation rights or the rights to stage musicals would pale into insignificance."
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