The court verdict in the case of copyright infringement in the movie “Hero” directed by Asghar Farhadi based on the expert opinions of three professors of the University of Tehran, experts and lecturers in the field of intellectual property rights, as well as four official art experts who unanimously dismissed the plaintiff’s claims as baseless and rejected. had announced, issued and the movie “Hero” was completely cleared of these accusations.
According to Mansour Jahani, international reporter of Artmag.ir, After filing a complaint by the former student of Asghar Farhadi (Azadeh Masihzadeh) regarding the violation of the author’s rights in the movie “Hero” and his claim to share in all the domestic and foreign revenues and awards of the movie “Hero”, the court due to In the stage of investigation and issuance of indictment, a non-expert referred the matter to one-person and three-person experts for a comprehensive legal review in three separate stages and finally to a three-person panel of Tehran University professors specializing in the field of copyright. All seven experts, after separately examining the contents of the case and analyzing the legal and artistic aspects of the matter, found the claims of the plaintiff (Azadeh Masihzadeh) invalid and considered the accusations against the producer of the movie “Hero” to be baseless.
In the verdict issued based on the opinions of official experts and academic experts, while explaining the legal and artistic basics in detail, and by examining the film “Hero” and all three different versions of the plaintiff’s documentary, as well as dozens of hours of footage from Asghar Farhadi’s workshop, it is firmly emphasized that the production of each A film or a work of art inspired by a real event or news published from it is completely unimpeded because a real event and its news are part of the public domain and belong to everyone, and the right to use it is not exclusive to anyone, and this It is completely accepted and self-evident all over the world.
The plaintiff’s documentary (Azadeh Masihzadeh) is based on a real event and the news published about it in Jam Jam newspapers, Iran and Titronline website on 23/4/2011 and 24/4/2011 as well as a news report of Fars Province TV. And retelling a published news does not create ownership rights for any person. Therefore, the similarities between these 2 documentary and fiction films, on the one hand, have come from the common source of the two works in reality and media news, and on the other hand, from the training and style of the workshop instructor Asghar Farhadi, and it can be said with certainty that there are no legal violations. It did not happen and the claims are completely rejected.
In another part of the expert opinions, it is emphasized that the plaintiff assembled a one-hour film from dozens of hours of footage of Asghar Farhadi’s workshop sessions, in which unilateral adjustments were made and adjusted to his advantage, and there was a huge difference between the original footage of the workshop and the film. provided by the complainant to the investigator during the investigation phase; Therefore, this video assembled from the workshop sessions, which is the main basis for issuing the indictment, is recognized as invalid.
Also, according to the review of the case documents and recorded images from the workshop, it was found that the narrative plan, structure, type of treatment with the subjects, type of narrative, how to challenge the claims of the subjects, the placement of the camera, the type of framing, primary and secondary treatment methods with the documentary subject. optimal atmosphere creation and even the ending (open ending) and many other elements of the documentary film have been presented and taught to the student by Farhadi, and all the training in the video assembled from the workshop sessions has been removed by the plaintiff. Based on this, the project presented to the student by Farhadi is more than an initial and crude idea and plan, and is actually a kind of pattern that is a complete framework for the formation of the narrative in the documentary. The mentioned is quite evident.
In the reviews, it has been stated that the movie “Hero” in terms of concept, storytelling, structure, characterization, performance and all the creative artistic elements discussed in the copyright field is completely independent and different from the documentary – and even the real event and the news. published – and it is not accused of copyright infringement from any angle.”
