Mysore Lawyers Execute Legal Work for Hollywood Films

Laiqh A. Khan
Mysore

            About 20 attorneys operating out of a three-storeyed building in Kuvempunagar in Mysore have been quietly providing high-end legal services to a host of leading Hollywood movie studios and high-profile television channels for the last six months.
            The 20 attorneys are part of a 35-member team of qualified professionals at SDD Global Solutions here.
            Few know that attorneys based in Mysore provided nearly all the legal defence for “Borat”, a comedy film that grossed more than $250 million at the box office. Similarly, the much-publicised film “Death of a President”, a fictional depiction of the assassination of George Bush, could not have been released without the legal assistance of SDD Global Solutions. The legal process outsourcing company has its hands full, completing the legal formalities for Al Pacino's new film.
            “I am not authorised to talk about it,” Sanjay Bhatia, who heads the company's operations in Mysore, told The Hindu.
            Though Mysore is the headquarters of SDD Global Solutions, the company is managed by a Manhattan-based firm SDD (Smith Dornan Dehn), an international media and intellectual property firm, which has most of its clients in New York, Los Angeles and London.
Big names
            The list of the company's clients is a virtual “who's who” of the world's motion picture companies, television channels and publising companies. Home Box Office (HBO), Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony Entertainment and MTV are among them.
            Though U.K.'s Channel Four is also a client, Mr. Bhatia said the attorneys in Mysore did not handle the controversy over the racist remarks against Indian star Shilpa Shetty on the channel's popular reality show “Big Brother”.
            Providing legal assistance to the global entertainment industry is only a part of the high-end functions the company offers. It does legal research work, legal drafting, immigration visa processing, intellectual property registrations, anti-infringement operations, besides insurance claims administration.
            Mr. Bhatia said the company also handles “copyright infringement” issues for some of the leadng publishing companies in the U.S.
            With much of the legal work pertaining to U.S. law, the employees, who have been recruited locally, are provided extensive training in that branch. “Leading attorneys and solicitors from the U.S. and the U.K. keep coming here to provide training to the staff”, Mr. Bhatia said.
            Mr. Bhatia said the company is on an “aggressive” recruitment drive to tap talented and qualified legal professionals to add an estimated 200 more employees in the coming months. “We need more people to handle the large amount of business coming to us,” he added.
            The company's Chairman, Russell Smith, who used to come to Mysore to learn yoga, decided to set up the company here on account of low cost of operations. He chose Mysore after considering various other destinations for a host of reasons, including less commuting time and low real estate rates.
            “Earlier, he (Russell Smith) used to stay in the U.S. and visited Mysore. Now he stays in Mysore and visits the U.S.,” Mr. Bhatia added.