* IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI % Judgment delivered on: 28/02/2026 + CS(COMM) 9/2024 & I.A. 260/2024 ASSOCIATED BROADCASTING COMPANY LIMITED .....Plaintiff versus GOOGLE LLC & ORS. .....Defendants Advocates who appeared in this case For the Plaintiff : Mr. Harsh Kaushik, Mr. Shwetank Tripathi, Mr. Deepank Singhal, Ms. Devangini & Mr. Harsh Prakash, Advocates.

For the Defendants : Ms. Aishwarya Kane, Advocate for Defendant No. 1.

CORAM:

HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE TEJAS KARIA

JUDGMENT

TEJAS KARIA, J I.A. 21020/2025 FACTUALBACKGROUND:

1. The Plaintiff has instituted the present Suit seeking, inter alia, injunction against Defendant Nos. 2 to 5 restraining them from issuing any groundless threat of copyright infringement and declaration that the acts of Plaintiff as elucidated in the Plaint do not amount to copyright infringement of the works alleged to be owned by Defendant Nos. 2 to 5.

2. In the present Suit, Defendants Nos. 2 to 5 have not filed a written statement and / or affidavit of admission or denial of documents filed by the Plaintiff. In this background, the Plaintiff has filed the present Application under Order XIIIA of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (“CPC”) as amended by the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, (“CC Act”) read with Rule 27 of the Delhi High Court Intellectual Property Rights Division Rules, 2022 read with Chapter XA Rule 3 of the Delhi High Court (Original Side) Rules, 2018 seeking Summary Judgment against Defendant Nos. 2 to 5 in respect of Prayer Paragraph Nos. 47 (i) and (ii) of the Plaint.

SUBMISSIONSONBEHALFOFTHEPLAINTIFF:

3. The learned Counsel for the Plaintiff made the following submissions:

3.1. The Plaintiff is a company incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956, and is inter alia engaged in the business of media and broadcasting services, news dissemination and owns and operates several television channels and digital platforms across the country in the name and style of ‘TV9’ along with the television network namely ‘TV9 Network’.

3.2. In addition to the traditional news broadcasting, the Plaintiff also provides digital news services through its websites viz. tv9hindi.com; tv9telugu.com; tv9bangla.com; tv9gujarati.com; tv9marathi.com, etc. The Plaintiff has also created YouTube Channels such as TV9Telugulive on 15.12.2011 and TV9Bharatvarsh on 19.11.2018 (“Contested Channels”) among other such channels on the platform YouTube, provided by Defendant Nos. 1 and 6.

3.3. In course of its business, the Plaintiff’s creative team creates various videos / programs on news reporting and current affairs from across the world. As a part of the programme, the Plaintiff uses certain pictures and video footage of real / current events and / or calamities available online for the sole purpose of reporting and / or informing the news to the members of the public about the same. The Plaintiff, wherever law requires, depending on the usage enters into appropriate agreements with third party content owners. Between 2020-23, the Plaintiff conceived and created original news programs on below mentioned events:

a. Laura Hurricane in US;

b. Ongoing Israel Hamas war;

c. Heavy Snowfall in US;

d. New York floods;

e. 2023 Chinese Balloon incident in US;

These events were covered by various news channels across the globe. In covering these events, in addition to their own creatives, the Plaintiff and other news channels source and use real-time on- ground footage from various sources made available online. The Plaintiff also used some on-ground footage from the material available online and uploaded the original news programs on the Contested Channels on various dates from 2020 to 2023.

3.4. Defendant No. 1 is the owner of the online video sharing and social medią platform YouTube. Defendant No. 2 appears to be a media brokering company based in the United States of America (“US”). Defendant No. 2 claims to be engaged in the business of creating and selling media footage of extreme weather conditions in the US. Defendant No. 3 app