There may not be any more of the cute Hanuman movies. The makers of Hanuman and its sequel Return Of Hanuman, Percept Pictures, have been temporarily restrained from using the Bal Hanuman character by the Vadodara City Civil court.

Percept has been accused by Shree Karma Productions for infringing their copyright of the character under the Copyright Act. Percept is planning to make another film in which Bal Hanuman takes on Ravana.

Copyright

Raju Hasija, director of Shree Karma Productions, told MiD DAY, "The character was designed on behalf of our company. We had engaged Silverline Technologies for producing an animated film of 55 minutes, titled Mahaveer Hanuman, based on the script to be provided by us." But for some reasons, Silverline couldn't make the film and entered into a monetary sharing alliance with Percept, which made the first Hanuman film. "Things went as we had planned till 2007. However, in 2007, we learnt that Percept is releasing a sequel to Hanuman without our consent as owners of the character," Hasija added.

Not our fault

But Shailendra Singh, joint managing director, Percept Pictures, said the characters in Hanuman and Return of Hanuman are different. "We will fight till the end, as we feel we are not in the wrong," said Singh. "We want to portray the different roles Hanuman played. At present, we are working on a project based on Ramayana and Lord Hanuman's role in it. We will challenge the order passed by the district court in Gujarat High Court in  some days, as the court has granted us time till November 3 to file an appeal," he added.