In joint petitions before the court, the film houses have sought to restrain Siti Cable promoted by Subhash Chandra and the Hinduja group-owned In Cable and their distributors from showing films produced by these multinationals.

The other five petitioners are Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Tristar Pictures, Universal City Studios and Lucasfilm.

The court today restrained the two cable operators from exhibiting films made by the Hollywood companies on their their cable network and directed the police to provide assistance in execution of the order.

The petitioners alleged that these two cable networks, which covered almost the entire country, had recently shown films like Speed,Commando, Blade, Mad City, As Good as it Gets, Wag the Dog, The Edge, The Mask of Zorro, Wild Things, Six Days Seven Nights, Delta Force, City of Angels, Hard Rain and Home Alone illegally.

The petitioners claimed that as per the first schedule of the International Copyright Order, 1991, the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 and the Copyright Amendment Act, 1994, they had the exclusive right to show or copy these films and the cable operators, by showing them without authority, had violated the acts.

The Hollywood companies submitted that film production was an extremely complex, time-consuming and costly affair and a well-defined distribution strategy was therefore, ``absolutely necessary for its success''.

Generally, the film was first released in cinema halls and it was only after the completion of the desired course that the movie was released in other formats -- commonly known as windows -- like video, cable and satellite TV, the petitioners said.

"At each stage (window) it is important toprotect the film from being screened on any other medium than that selected by the distributors," counsel for the petitioners Mukul Rohtagi and Chander Lall said.