Authorial Sovereignty and Residual Control in Indian Film Music: Lessons from the Ilaiyaraaja Litigations

The Copyright Act, 1957 distributes rights in a film song among the composer as author of the musical work, the producer as first owner of the film and sound recording, performers holding independent rights, and assignees taking derivative exploitation rights. This fragmentation leaves unsettled how much control a composer retains once a work is assigned or absorbed into a film. This paper examines that question through the Ilaiyaraaja litigations, which span assignment duration, competing record-label claims, digital exploitation and personality rights. Using a doctrinal method, it analyses Sections 13(4), 17, 18, 19, 38 to 38B and 57 of the Act, as amended in 2012, together with Madras and Delhi High Court decisions and the Supreme Court’s ruling in IPRS v. Eastern India Motion Pictures Association. It argues that although producers hold default first ownership of commissioned film sound recordings under Section 17 proviso (b), authorial sovereignty survives as residual control through four routes: the independent copyright preserved by Section 13(4), the five-year default limit on silent assignments under Section 19(5), the non-waivable royalty entitlements introduced in 2012, and the perpetual moral rights under Section 57. It also identifies unresolved tension within IPRS v. EIMP and a continuing gap in allocating concurrent rights on digital platforms. The paper concludes by proposing a unified statutory digital licence, automated split-accounting of non-waivable royalties, and statutory codification of personality and post-mortem persona rights.