Aug. 8: Spot the odd one out: Murder, Bheja Fry, Zinda, Partner.

Answer: Partner. All four have been lifted from or are remakes of well-known foreign films but Partner could be the only one unlucky enough to be sued.

For the first time in the history of Bollywood, a foreign production house has decided to take action against a Hindi film that it claims has been directly lifted from one of its flicks without acquiring the rights.

Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment and partner Sony Pictures are reportedly planning to sue the co-producers of Partner — in which Salman Khan plays a love doctor giving dating tips to singleton Govinda — for cheating from the Hollywood film, Hitch.

The buzz doing the rounds is that K Sera Sera and Eros International could be sued for $30 million.

A representative of Overbrook Entertainment in India said it was exploring the legal options with Sony Pictures. If a case is filed, it would be done in a British court as both the Indian companies were registered in the UK and the US, a Sony official said.

Eros has denied that Partner is a remake of the Will Smith-starrer.

This is the first time that a Hindi movie has run into such trouble though many films are copies of foreign flicks. Murder, in which Mallika Sherawat romances old flame Emraan Hashmi behind her husband’s back, is based on the Hollywood film, Unfaithful.

Bheja Fry, in which Rajat Kapoor picks an idiot as entertainment for a party but the idiot emerges hero, is based on the French film, The Dinner Game.

Zinda, in which Sanjay Dutt is jailed for years in an act of vendetta, is based on South Korean movie OldBoy. There was talk that OldBoy producer Show East was contemplating action against Sanjay Gupta, but no court order has come his way.

“This has never happened before. When we are given a story line, we do not know if it has been inspired or lifted from any other movie,” said Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association president T.P. Agarwal.

“Of course, Bollywood is known to have picked up ideas and stories not only from Hollywood movies, but also from Pakistani films. It has become a norm to go ahead with the movie without bothering to acquire the copyright.”

Sanjay Tandon, the former director-general of the Intellectual Property Rights Society, said suing the producers would not be easy.

“There’s no copyright on ideas. Only if they can prove that their film has been copied frame by frame do they have a case. They also have to prove the substantiality of the copy. Also, if they can prove that the treatment is similar, then they can take the producers to court. Sony Pictures will need to do a lot of proving,” he said.