Zee Entertainment Enterprises initiated a legal action against Jio Hotstar owned by Reliance Industries and the Walt Disney Company. Zee has taken a legal route and alleged unauthorised use of its copyrighted music content. The lawsuit was filed on April 14th in a court based in New Delhi and the filed damage charges are said to be 3 million USD (Rs 25 Cr). Zee said that the music catalogue was used at least 50 times in some of the tv programmes and on Jio Hotstar.
The licensing agreements for the same expired in 2024 and 2025. Zee said that “the illegal exploitation thereof amounted to copyright infringement,”. Zee asked the court to restrain the use of their work further across the platforms owned by Jio Hotstar. JioStar has a bunch of tv channels with over 500 million monthly users including the subscribers of Jio Hotstar. Zee Music has a catalogue of more than 19000 songs in multiple Indian languages. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for July 23rd.
JioStar has denied the allegations made by Zee. More details awaited.
