Hollywood in India: Protecting Intellectual Property (A)

It was a warm afternoon in January 2010 and Vijay Singh, Chief Executive Officer of Fox Star Studios, had just finished a meeting with his senior management team at the company's headquarters in Mumbai, India. During the meeting, discussions centered around the upcoming release of My Name is Khan, scheduled for February 12, 2010. Fox Star Studios was a joint venture between Hollywood's 20th Century Fox and Asia's STAR Television. Published reports indicated that the studio had paid in excess of $22 million to purchase the global distribution rights for the movie, which had an estimated production cost of $12 million. Starring one of Indian cinema's leading actors, Shah Rukh Khan, and directed by one of the industry's most successful directors, Karan Johar, the film was one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year. Fox planned an aggressive distribution campaign involving an international release of 500 prints across 65 countries. Success in the Indian movie market had eluded Hollywood studios thus far: despite investing over $100 million on producing films in India between 2007 and 2009, Hollywood studios had not released any major hits…