The Supreme Court recently held that activities undertaken by the Co-ordination Committee of Artists and Technicians of WB Film and Television to prevent the telecast of a dubbed television serial violated section 3 of the Competition Act, 2002. The judgment arose out of an appeal filed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) against an order of the Competition Appellate Tribunal (COMPAT) setting aside the CCI’s order of cartelization against the committee.
In the case, the committee and the East India Motion Pictures Association had issued threatening letters and boycott threats to two Bengali-language TV channels demanding that they stop broadcasting a dubbed version of a Hindi-language TV serial, Mahabharat, on the ground that such dubbing was against established convention and adversely affected Bengali-speaking producers, artists and technicians.
The proprietor of Hart Video (sub-assigner for the dubbing) filed an information against these threats before the CCI, and the CCI, through a majority order, found the committee’s conduct anti-competitive in the relevant market of “film and television industry of West Bengal”. The dissenting minority order found the relevant market to be the market of “telecasting of the dubbed serial on television in West Bengal”, and held that the conduct would not be anti-competitive. On appeal by the committee, the COMPAT upheld the minority view.
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The Supreme Court set aside the COMPAT’s order and agreed with the relevant market definition in the CCI’s majority order. The court found that the COMPAT had taken a myopic view of the relevant market divorced from vital aspects of the case.
The court also rejected the argument that the committee, being a trade union, would not come under the definition of an “enterprise” and hence could not have violated section 3. The court observed that as the committee was an association of enterprises espousing the economic interests of its members its conduct was covered under section 3.
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The dispute digest is compiled by Bhasin & Co, Advocates, a corporate law firm based in New Delhi. The authors can be contacted at lbhasin@bhasinco.in or bhasin@gmail.com. Readers should not act on the basis of this information without seeking professional legal advice.
