Back
New Delhi
Court restrains four lawyers from using pilfered data
Staff Reporter
| Law firm establishes a prima facie case against them `The lawyers had illegally copied and removed entire confidential information from the hard drives of the computer' |
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has restrained four lawyers, including a Nigerian national, from using in any manner the proprietary data and confidential information illegally obtained from their former employer, law firm Titus & Company.
Allowing the four lawyers-- Alfred Adebare, Seema Ahluwalia Jhingan, Syed Alishan Naqvee and Dimpy Mohanty-- to carry on their profession and utilise the skills and information they had mentally retained, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul in a judgment restrained them from using the copied material of their former employer saying that the latter alone had a right in it.
"The plaintiff (law firm) has clearly established a prima facie case in respect of the rights in the material taken away by the lawyers, and if an interim relief
Agreements
"The defendants (lawyers) having worked with the plaintiff cannot utilise the agreements, due diligence reports, list of clients and all such material which has come to their knowledge or has been developed during their relationship with the plaintiff and which is per se confidential,'' the order said.
"The defendants are thus restrained either through themselves or their representatives from utilising the material of the plaintiff forming subject matter of a suit and from disseminating or otherwise exploiting the same, including the data, for their own benefit,'' the judgment said.
In its suit, the law firm had told the Court that the four lawyers had illegally copied and removed entire economic records, protected documents, proprietary precedents and other client confidential information from the hard drives of the computer network system belonging to it, and later they had established an operation of their own relying heavily on the pilfered data.
© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu