Won’t use Rajinikanth film songs in promotional content: Chennai Super Kings tells Madras high court

CHENNAI: Fans of the IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings (CSK) will no longer be greeted by songs and background scores from Rajinikanth films, as the team informed the Madras high court that it would desist from using music tracks and songs from the films ‘Jailer', ‘Jailer 2' and ‘Coolie', following a copyright infringement plea filed by Sun TV Network.

Senior advocate P S Raman made the submission on behalf of CSK in response to a plea moved by Sun TV Network seeking to restrain CSK from using the songs and music owned by it in the team's promotions shared on its official social media pages.

According to Sun TV Network, its copyrighted content—including ‘Harbour Gang BGM' from ‘Coolie', ‘Hukum Reloaded' from ‘Jailer 2', ‘Hukum' and Rajinikanth's dialogues from ‘Jailer'—was used by CSK in its promotional content uploaded on its official social media pages.

Representing Sun TV Network, senior advocate J Ravindran contended that the team was using the songs and music from the three Tamil films, infringing the copyrights of Sun Pictures. He wanted the court to pass an injunction against CSK from using the songs in its promos and direct the team to pay 1 crore in damages for infringement of its copyright.

Responding to the plea, Raman submitted that CSK was using some portions of the songs in its promos for three years and that the petitioner did not oppose it. Since the petitioner was now objecting to it, he said CSK would desist from using it.

"We will file an affidavit to this effect," the senior counsel said, and added that CSK will not use the songs without getting consent of the copyright owner or a Phonographic Performance Limited Licence (PPLL). Recording the submissions, Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy adjourned the hearing to March 16 for CSK to file an affidavit.

According to Sun TV Network, on March 1, CSK officially unveiled its new jersey for IPL 2026, offering its fans a glimpse of the fresh design through a promotional video shared on its social media pages. In the video, CSK used audio tracks and dialogues from the films ‘Jailer', ‘Jailer 2' and ‘Coolie.'

"The promotional videos mischievously exploited Sun TV Network's copyrighted works for aiding the sale of the match jersey 2026 priced online at 2,399 and other merchandise. It is needless to state the influencing effect of the music from films involving Rajinikanth and music director Anirudh would have in aiding the merchandise sales of a team based in south India and more particularly Chennai," the petitioner said.