Delhi High Court Deprecates ANI's Conduct In Copyright Infringement Case Against 'Dynamite News'

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal filed by news agency Asian News International (ANI), challenging a single judge order passed in its copyright infringement suit against news platform Dynamite News.

The single judge had on October 14 directed YouTube to unblock the channel of Dynamite News.

A division bench comprising Justice C Hari Shankar and Justice Om Prakash Shukla found no merit in ANI's appeal and dismissed it in limine.

On March 21, Dynamite News told the Court that it shall take down the 9 allegedly infringing videos as claimed by ANI from its YouTube channel, claiming that they were erroneously reproduced by some employee. It was also undertaken that Dynamite News shall not use or reproduce ANI's videos in future as well.

The matter was again mentioned before the single judge on October 14, where Dynamite News said that ANI approached YouTube with fresh URLs, uploaded prior to the date of the March order, alleging infringement of their Copyright. This led to blocking of Dynamite's YouTube channel.

Dynamite News alleged that ANI tried to overreach the March 21 order by approaching YouTube, without approaching the single judge first, for take down of the said fresh URLs.

Nonetheless, Dynamite News submitted that it is willing to block the fresh URLs. The single judge had then directed ANI's counsel to inform Dynamite News of the URLs within two days.

The single judge had also directed YouTube to unblock the channel of Dynamite News within two days of the news platform approaching YouTube, after receipt of the list of URLs from ANI.

“Upon unblocking of the YouTube channel by Defendant No. 2, Defendant No. 1 shall take down, remove, disable and block all the URLs as notified by the Plaintiff within a period of 24 hours and inform the same to the Plaintiff and Defendant No. 2. If in case Defendant No. 1 fails to take down, remove, disable and block the URLs as notified by the Plaintiff within a period of 24 hours of unblocking of the YouTube channel, Defendant No. 2 shall again block the YouTube channel of Defendant No. 1,” the single judge had ordered.

During the hearing today, the division bench noted that it was not in dispute that the videos, sought to be taken taken down by Dynamite News, were later unblocked by YouTube. But ANI approached YouTube directly seeking take down of additional fresh videos alleging copyright infringement.

It further noted that before approaching YouTube directly, ANI did not deem it fit to approach the single judge despite being in litigation with Dynamite News.

The Court expressed displeasure in the manner ANI proceeded in the matter, especially how it managed to get the single judge order “reversed” and getting Dynamite News' YouTube channel again blocked despite being unblocked after March order. This deserves to be deprecated, the Court said.

The Bench proceeded to dismiss the appeal, saying that the same was completely unjustified.

However, the Court said that if any infringing clip is uploaded by any third party, the same would constitute an independent issue and that it cannot pass any pre-emptory direction on the issue.

Title: ANI Media Pvt Ltd v. Dynamite News Network Private Limited & Anr

Citation: 2025 LiveLaw (Del) 1390