LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday clarified that the producer of the film, “The Legend of Maula Jatt”, had not been restrained from any act he was entitled to in accordance with law.

Justice Aminuddin Khan observed this disposing of a civil miscellaneous application moved by producer Bilal Lashari, seeking clarification of March 18th stay order issued by the court on a petition filed by Muhammad Sarwar Bhatti of Bahoo Film Corporation, the producer of original Punjabi hit “Maula Jatt.”

The judge, in the previous order, had stayed “unauthorised” use of title of film “Maula Jatt”, dialogues, characters, making/shooting and exhibition of work identical to the movie.

Mr Lashari, through a counsel, contended that the petitioner had been misinterpreting the court order and resorted to propaganda. The counsel argued that his client would be satisfied if the court clarified to the extent that he had not been restrained from doing any lawful act.

Justice Khan observed that perusal of the record showed that the respondent (Mr Lashari) had not been restrained from any act he was entitled or authorised to do under the law. With this observation, the judge disposed of the application.

In the main petition, Mr Bhatti had submitted that he possessed the movie’s rights, including the title and cinematographic work and the censorship certificate was also issued by the censor board in his name as producer.

He said the respondents, including Bilal Lashari, had no right to use the title, script, character, dialogue, poetry, music etc in respect of this work. However, he said, the respondents had been infringing his legal rights.

Bhatti said the respondent producer and his team were making the new film with same dialogues, characters and script, which under the law they were not entitled to do.

He had asked the court to restrain the respondents from unauthorised and illegal use of the title, script, characters, dialogues, poetry, style, songs, music, besides registeration and exhibition of the work deceptively similar to the original film.

The court’s March 18 order reads, “Respondents are restrained from doing the afore-noted acts unauthorisedly.”

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2019