The Commercial Court of Bangalore in an original suit granted ex parte interim injunction against a party for breach of non-disclosure agreement, misappropriation of intellectual property, and passing off.
The Plaintiff, a pharma software solution company, hired Defendant to develop a software, “Pharmacokinetic Modeling Program” (PKMP), which is used for supporting pharmaceutical research and development. The software is registered with the copyright office of the USA under the plaintiff's name.
The Plaintiff and the Defendant, in 2017, decided to incorporate an entity in India under the name APL. The company, in pursuant of the incorporation, created a website to showcase the registered software, PKMP.
The court ordered the said decision in view of the facts that the defendant, on the dissolution of the business partnership between the two parties, instead of handing over the plaintiff's intellectual property, confidential information and other assets which he possessed during the course of his association in the plaintiff's company as per the NDA between them, blocked access to “GoDaddy” website account on which the Plaintiff's Domain Name and website was licensed.
In addition to the above, the defendant also created a similar website and provided the same in the “Home Page” of the Plaintiff's original website, hence passing off as the plaintiff.
The court hence held: “an Exparte Temporary Injunction is ordered restraining the defendant by himself or through his representatives, agents, family members and all other persons claiming under or through him or acting in concert with him or otherwise howsoever by or with him directly or indirectly from marketing, selling or accessing the plaintiff copyright software Pharmacokinetic Modeling Program(PKMP) or representing to be part of or Associated with plaintiff company or any of its affiliates and using any of its trade name, trade mark domain name, E-mails access codes, software codes, databases which are owned by the plaintiff company or any other comprising of the term APL in any manner whatsoever till the appearance of the defendant.”
Appearing on behalf of the Plaintiff are, Mr. Tarun Khurana, Mr. Abhijeet Deshmukh, Mr. Arjun Santhosh, Advocates of Khurana and Khurana, Advocates & IP Attorneys.
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