Indian Creative Industry Provides Opportunities for Expansion & Leaving a Global Footprint of the Country: Justice Prathiba M. Singh

MUMBAI, 28 September 2022: Hon’ble Justice Prathiba M Singh, Judge, Delhi High Court today said, “There are enormous opportunities that the Indian Creative Sector provides for expansion and leaving a global footprint of the country.”

Addressing the two-day ‘FICCI FRAMES Fast Track 2022’ on strengthening India’s IP Ecosystem, Justice Singh highlighted, “There is a need for a unified central agency for enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights that will help strengthen the overall IP ecosystem.”

While addressing the low turnover of the Indian movie industry as compared to other countries, she highlighted that USA produced less than half the number of films and generated 8 times more box office revenue while China produced almost half the films, yet the box office collections was nearly 7 times of India. Similarly, in the Indian music industry, she highlighted that the Indian music consumption was above the global average and close to that of US and the UK, but revenue generated by India was 65 times lesser than that of the USA and 1/5^th of the UK.

Sharing her insights on the Indian arts and painting industry, she said that while a combined 8 per cent of the ‘world’s wealth spent on treasure’, consists of spends on fine art paintings, pictures, and sculptures; only 0.02 per cent of the Indian wealth is spent on arts. She highlighted that India’s visual art market was valued around USD 0.17 billion in 2017 and the visual art sector was prone to forgeries with an estimated USD 1 million worth of forged art traded in India every year.

Mr Karan Thapar, Deputy Secretary, DPIIT, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, spoke about the Government’s initiative towards protecting the rights of the creative industry stakeholders. He said that the government while being committed towards strengthening of IP laws, was also focused on the sensitization and awareness about IP among enforcement agencies and the judiciary.

Ms Dipti Kotak, Chief Legal Officer, Media Business, Reliance Industries Ltd., Ms Gowree Gokhale, Partner, Nishith Desai Associates, Mr Uday Singh, Managing Director, Motion Pictures Association(MPA) India and Mr Kaushik Moitra, Partner, Bharucha & Partners also shared their perspectives during the interaction.