Warner Bros may be regretting its delve into Bollywood. Its first release released last week, Saas Bahu aur Sense, about a group of middle-class housewives who dabble on the Indian Stock Exchange, has crashed at the box-office.

The Hollywood giant faced further woes this week when a Delhi court rejected its lawsuit against the makers of the Bollywood film, Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors. The court’s verdict means that the film, originally due to release last week, will now hit cinemas this Friday.

Warners had argued that the Indian title was too similar to its own Harry Potter franchise. The case was dismissed as the court said that readers of the JK Rowling bestsellers were sufficiently educated to know that Hari Puttar was different. Further, Warners were accused of delay in bringing the action which they apparently knew about since 2005. Mirchi Movies, makers of the Indian kiddie film, told the court that their film had no connection with the Harry Potter movies as 'Hari' was a common Indian boys name and that ‘Puttar’ meant ‘son’ in Hindi and Punjabi.

Warners should have thought twice before bring this action. Remember author Barbara Taylor Bradford who lost her plagiarism case in 2003 against the makers of Indian tele-serial Karisma – A Miracle of Destiny? Bradford had alleged that the series was a rip-off of her bestseller novel A Woman of Substance. The Calcutta court disagreed even though Karisma about a street sweeper, who becomes the head of an international corporation, bore a striking similarity to Bradford’s heroine Emma Hart who rose from being a servant to the head of the world’s biggest department store.

Harri Puttar tells the story of a 10 year old Indian lad who moves from India to the UK and gets left behind at home when his family goes on holiday. This sounds suspiciously similar to the plot of Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone films. Will Twentieth Century Fox sue?

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