The footage was brief — approximately three seconds of behind-the-scenes material from the Tamil film Naanum Rowdy Dhaan. Brevity, as any copyright lawyer will confirm, is not a defence to infringement. It is, at most, a defence to a large damages figure. The harder question posed by Wunderbar Films' suit against Netflix was a different one entirely, dressed in procedural clothing: when a streaming platform makes allegedly infringing content available across India simultaneously, where in India can the rights holder sue?

The answer the Madras High Court gave in January 2025 — before the substantive claim had been tested — will be read more carefully than the headline numbers suggest.

The Dispute and the Procedural Attack

Wunderbar Films, owned by actor-producer Dhanush K. Raja, holds copyright in Naanum Rowdy Dhaan. Netflix's documentary Nayanthara: Beyond the Fairy Tale allegedly used a clip from that film without authorisation. Wunderbar came to the Madras High Court seeking a restraining order and damages of Rs. 10 crore.

Netflix responded with a two-part procedural challenge — an application to reject the plaint under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and a separate application to revoke leave to sue under Clause 12 of the Letters Patent — both on jurisdictional grounds. The argument was simple: neither party's registered office falls within the Madras High Court's territory. Netflix's Indian production arm, Los Gatos Production Services India LLP, was incorporated in Mumbai. Wunderbar's registered office was not in Chennai either. Without a jurisdictional anchor, the plaint should not stand.

Justice Krishnan Ramasamy dismissed both applications.

Where the Cause of Action Lives

Clause 12 of the Letters Patent confers original civil jurisdiction on the Madras High Court where the cause of action arises — in whole or in part — within its territorial limits. The test is not where the defendant is incorporated. It is not where the plaintiff's head office sits. It is where the wrong happened.

The court's holding on this point is compact but consequential. A streaming platform that makes content available to subscribers in Chennai is doing something in Chennai. Every subscriber who opens Netflix in Tamil Nadu and accesses the documentary receives an allegedly infringing communication at that moment, in that place. The act of making available is not a single event occurring at a distant server. It is a recurring act that happens wherever the content is received. That is a cause of action arising in part within the court's territory.

Netflix's structural argument — that its relevant entity was in Mumbai, that any editorial or licensing decisions were taken elsewhere — did not move the court. The Letters Patent test asks where the wrong lands, not where the decision to commit it was made.

The Urgency Dimension

There was a second argument embedded in Wunderbar's resistance to the challenge: the nature of streaming infringement is ongoing. A documentary that remains live on the platform reaches new viewers every day. Forcing the plaintiff to abandon Chennai proceedings and re-file in Mumbai — while the allegedly infringing documentary continued to accumulate streams — would cause measurable prejudice that a later award of damages could not fully repair.

Justice Ramasamy accepted this. The urgency of halting ongoing dissemination is a legitimate factor in evaluating whether revoking leave is appropriate. An injunction sought against a live stream is not the same as a historical infringement claim. The platform runs continuously; the harm accretes continuously. And three seconds, the court made clear, is not a threshold question at all — it goes to quantum of damages, not the forum in which those damages are claimed.

The Structural Lesson for Platforms

Netflix had constructed, as most large streaming platforms do, a layered corporate presence in India: an Indian production entity, a streaming entity, and a parent company abroad. The argument implicit in its jurisdictional challenge was that this structure — by concentrating the legally relevant entity in Mumbai — narrows the geography in which it can be sued.

The court's ruling forecloses that argument in copyright infringement cases where the platform is accessible nationally. The entity that produces content is not the entity that makes it available. What the Letters Patent cares about is the act of making available — and that act occurs wherever a subscriber receives the content. A production arm in Mumbai does not quarantine the cause of action to a single High Court jurisdiction.

The Takeaway

For rights holders, the implication is direct: sue where the platform reaches, not only where it is registered. If your content is being streamed without authorisation in Tamil Nadu, the Madras High Court is available to you — regardless of where the platform has chosen to incorporate its Indian entity.

For streaming platforms, the content clearance consequence is equally clear. A clearance process robust enough to hold up in any High Court where the platform operates is no longer optional risk management. The platform's national footprint is also its national exposure. Any content accessible in Chennai can ground proceedings in Chennai. Any content accessible in Kolkata can ground proceedings in Calcutta. Entity structure provides no shelter from jurisdiction where the cause of action is the act of streaming itself.