Media Law’s Kinship With Trademarks

18th September, 2023 - 4:51 am Categories: Media & Entertainment Law 0 Comments

INTRODUCTION

Censorship is one such monitoring agency that keeps a fair check on what should be displayed in the public domain. The existence of one such agency is to limit people from criticizing political issues, defaming the personalities of due respect, causing hurt to religious sentiments, exposing sensitive content, etc. Certain laws in India deal with censorship like Cinematography Act 1952, Press Council Act 1978, Cr.Pc, IT Act 2000, Social media platform and the new IT rules 2021. One of the advantages of this regulating body can be to eliminate confusion among people, because there can be peculiar movies that draw an erroneous image in the minds of people related to a place, a group of people, or a country’s negative image, showcasing the government and its ruling parties that create a bad impact on the general public. The end purpose is to create an impression on viewers so that they gain something from these artworks which ultimately satisfies the owner of the movie or kind of. The Indian Film Industry, being one of the largest to release numerous movies with diverse and controversial content needs an authority that controls its production in a way that the concerned board is authorized to give licenses and certifications by watching it before the release.

This also constitutes the last step of movie production that decides whether the movie should be released or not. The total discretion is in the hands of the censor board and they can decide which contents should be altered or eliminated from the particular movie. It can be noted that certain words and images can be suppressed if felt inappropriate. They focus on preserving moral values while censoring each content. Depending on its nature and type, censorship can be moral, military, political, religious, and corporate.

ROLE OF CENSOR CERTIFICATES IN TRADEMARKS

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), after going through the examination process,  issues certificates based on different categories. Films with ‘U‘ certification denote that it is fit for public exhibition and are family-friendly without any restrictions including content like family, action, thriller, comedy, and romance. Films with ‘U/A‘ certification denote that they contain mild adult scenes considered inappropriate for children below 12 years of age unless accompanied by parents, and abusive content is muted too. Most of the movies fall under this category including thrillers, actions, and nudity. Films with ‘A‘ certification stand contrary to the above two certifications because of the nature of liberty in displaying the contents. They are restricted to people above 18 years and include obscene content like sexual scenes, strong violence, nudity, and abusive language. However, words or statements that cause harm to certain groups of people, communities, or women are not entertained. Films with ‘S‘ certification denote that the viewers can be only professionals like doctors, engineers, scientists, and so on.

[Image Sources : Shutterstock]

The main motive of certification marks is to meet the prescribed quality and standards demanded by each authority. We can see how trademarks play a vital role in censorship which uses ‘certification marks’ in governing the exhibition of content to the public. Each of these certificates has a unique word or letter distinguishing from each other and that creates a sense for the people in differentiating between the contents to be telecasted. One of the features that distinguishes certification marks from trademarks is that the proprietors can only license the products instead of using them as their mark. This is the medium to determine whether the goods or servicesshould be licensed or not. Here, when we talk about censorship of films, we see that certificates that contain unique marks are exclusive of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), under whose discretion movies can be released. We can also see certificates given to dubbed and foreign movies to censor any such restricted content or scenes. But, ‘Doordarshan’ have been exempted from giving these certificates because they had their way of screening process before the release. At the beginning of a movie, many of us would have noticed the certificates being displayed for around 10 seconds which is mandatory for every movie to run. This can also be taken as an indicator to inform the viewers about the category of movie being displayed. The core motive of CBFC is to eliminate the piracy of films as there exist many duplications of movies. Later on, section 6AA was added to the Cinematograph Act, 1952 where punishment is up to 3 years of imprisonment and a fine of not less than 3lakhs.

Hence, it is evident that the role of trademarks is not limited to a particular owner or their brand, but also takes a key role in acting as a basis or standard that is authorized to permit or disapprove the movies if they fail to meet the specified requirements. Through this article, we got to know the significance of trademarks in media law and their functioning.

Author: Maria Rose Jopaul, A Student at Lloyd Law College, Greater Noida, in case of any queries please contact/write back to us via email to chhavi@khuranaandkhurana.com or at Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorney.