Indian court rejects Hari Puttar challenge

A Bollywood film about a boy called Hari Puttar will hit cinemas in India this week after a court rejected a Hollywood studio's claims that the name was too similar to Harry Potter. Fans of the Harry Potter books and films would know the difference between them and an Indian Punjabi film called Hari Puttar – A Comedy of Terrors, the court said in its ruling. Warner Brothers claimed that Hari Puttar infringed its intellectual property rights. The film's producers, Mirchi Movies, said its story bore no resemblance to that of the famous boy wizard. Hari is a common name in India and Hindi for God, while "puttar" is Punjabi for son, they argued. "It's clearly great to have won this case," Munish Purii, the Mirchi chief executive, said today. "We are hoping for a good release, although the timing of the Warner case distracted us from marketing." A Warner Brothers spokeswoman, Deborah Lincoln, said the company was reviewing the judgment. "We brought these proceedings because we believe that the proposed title and marketing of the defendants' film infringed our intellectual property rights," Lincoln said in an e-mail. She said the Hari Puttar producers wanted to "confuse consumers and benefit from the well-known and well-loved Harry Potter brand". Hari Puttar is a comedy about a 10-year-old Indian boy whose family moves to a remote part of Yorkshire. While his parents are away he becomes involved in a plan to save the world from two bungling criminals. Some critics claim the story is similar to 20th Century Fox's 1990 film Home Alone – a charge also denied by the Hari producers. Hari Puttar will be released across India on Friday and globally next month. Earlier this month, the Harry Potter author, JK Rowling, won her claim that a fan violated her copyright with plans to publish a Harry Potter encyclopaedia after a Manhattan judge ruled that the unauthorised guide would cause her irreparable harm as a writer.