Literary work developed with the help of theme and then into a plot and then finally a story with the help of characters and settings. It is the mixture of all these elements which give substance to the work.

“If someone steals this theme, plot, and storyline, is he not thereby plagiarising the expression of the plaintiff’s work?

Can the theme, plot, and storyline be simply dismissed as non-protectable ideas of the plaintiff’s work and not its expression?

I think not. We have not yet reached that level of extraction where the work can be stripped to its non-protectable idea,” the judge said.

Gupte concluded that though the producers of the web series developed Khan’s theme, plot, and storyline differently, prima facie it was a case of copyright infringement.