Taking preventive measures to protect its official broadcast rights for the Commonwealth Games under the Copyright laws, Prasar Bharati has approached Delhi High Court against 24 channels from telecasting illicit footage of the games.Prasar Bharati, filed an injunction suit on Monday against 24 broadcasters and the organizing committee of the Commonwealth Games.

           It also sent notices to TV channels stating it holds exclusive rights to cover the event and any illegal telecast of its footage would be a violation of copyright laws.Commonwealth Games, or CWG, are to be held in New Delhi from 3-14 October.

          “This (the court petition) is a preventive measure to disallow any of the private news channels to take CWG footage indiscriminately,” said a senior executive at Doordarshan, who didn’t want to be identified. “Many private news channels used footage of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games even though Doordarshan had bagged the exclusive rights to air the event in India.”

          The broadcaster had purchased telecast rights for the Beijing Olympics for `13 crore. “The exclusivity of the property was lost and we cannot afford the same mistake with Commonwealth Games. the executive said.

         Prasar Bharati says it hired TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd, the Mumbai-based television audience measurement agency, to track footage of the Olympics used by news channels and found some of the broadcasters used more than 17,000 seconds a day. The petition said Prasar Bharati is seeking damages of more than `5 crore from the two dozen-odd broadcasters.

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