Salman Khan's Wanted wins eight year-long copyright infringement case against Meerut-based writer

What Prabhu Deva's 2008 action entertainer Wanted did for the Hindi film industry is unparalleled. With that film, the team of producers Boney Kapoor and his wife Sridevi, the lead star Salman Khan and the director Deva kicked off the trend of remakes of regional films, particularly those of south Indian cinema.However, back in 2009, a Meerut based writer-director Birbal Singh Rana sued Kapoor, Sridevi, Khan and Deva in a copyright infringement case as he claimed that they had aped his script of Raja Bhai IPS that he had submitted in the office of BSK Network and Entertainment in 2004.[caption id="attachment_3437398" align="alignnone" width="825"] Salman Khan in a still from Wanted. Twitter[/caption]The case has been going on in the Allahabad High Court since 2010 and the judiciary has finally ruled the case in Kapoor's favour, as reported by India.com. The petitioner has been bribing Kapoor all these years pushing him to pay Rs 75 lakh for out of court settlement.“This kind of extortion is becoming a practice by miscreants who target high-profile celebrities. There is no copyright violation of the idea, subject matter, theme, plot or historical or legendary facts. The applicant (Boney and Co.) are innocent and have not committed the present offence,” stated RD Yadav, the Additional Government Advocate.Pune Mirror quotes Kapoor as saying, "Sometimes it’s just plain mischief and sometimes there are ulterior motives involved. It is sad because there have been genuine cases of deceitful filmmakers, who have copied portions from other films unofficially, while others said they were inspired and such cases went unchallenged."The filmmaker adds that he legally acquired rights from not only Prabhu Deva who made the Tamil version but also Puri Jagannadh who created the Telugu version prior to that. “I was shocked when I got the first summons, more so when the lower court in Meerut accused us of copyright infringement without proper verification of the script. The petitioner then started harassing and blackmailing us, trying to extort money for no fault of our," says Kapoor, as per the same report.