Data privacy’s role in promoting IP rights protection in India
Does intellectual property play an important role in data privacy? Following a court ruling in India, we will see that the abuse of IP rights protection can’t interfere with a person’s data privacy rights.
Following the decision of the Indian court in the case Neetu Singh & Anr. v. Telegram FZ LLC & Ors., CS (Comm) 282/2020, in this jurisdiction in general, we learn that IP rights do not mean that the parties can abuse their rights to interfere another important right of humankind – data privacy.
A copyright infringement lawsuit has been filed by Delhi-based KD Campus Private Limited and its founder and director Neetu Singh against the famous messaging app globally, Telegram. According to the coaching center in Delhi, India, Telegram distributed their videos, lectures, books, and other study materials without their permission.
The contents in KD Campus are mostly related to studies, predominantly examinations which are also one of their main advertisements, to invite students to take ‘live exams’ in the difficult market of India. The company has gained very high attention from native students due to the fact that India is one of the most competitive countries in the entire world with ‘unemployment’ as the most difficult math equation.
According to KD Campus, despite a court order in July 2020, unauthorized dissemination of study materials continued to be taken by Telegram without remorse. As a result, the Delhi High Court ordered Telegram to disclose certain information, including the channel operators and devices used by the app to distribute the materials, as well as users’ mobile numbers, IP addresses, and email addresses to solve the case.
However, Telegram rejected this order, citing that the disclosure of user information is a violation of its privacy policy and the laws of Singapore, where its physical servers are located.
Expert opinions
According to Gautam K.M., an associate partner at Krishnamurthy & Co. in Bangalore, the defendants relied heavily on Rule 4 (2) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
This rule states that the provision of any such sensitive personal data or information of the first originator are strictly prohibited except in some rare cases. Such cases are when a party is ordered by a judicial order passed by a court of competent jurisdiction for the purposes of prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution, or punishment of an offense.
In addition, Article 21 of the Constitution of Indian and Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution also provides the highest protection of the right to freedom of speech and expression which also strongly protect a person’s data privacy.
Hence, based on these two points, the Delhi High Court has rejected the above contentions, “citing Section 81 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 which clearly states that the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 are supplemental to the Indian Copyright Act, 1957,” said Gautam.
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