Delhi High Court: In a case wherein, an application was filed under Order 39 Rules 1 and 2 of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908 (‘CPC’) seeking temporary injunction against the defendants to restrain them from unlawfully sharing copyrighted materials, Pratibha M. Singh J., opined that if the defendants were not blocked from disseminating the plaintiff’s copyrighted material, the plaintiff would suffer enormous monetary loss including loss of subscribers and goodwill. Thus, the Court opined that a case had been established for grant of an injunction to prevent further distribution of the plaintiff’s copyrighted material and accordingly restrained the defendants from downloading, uploading, storing, sharing, transmitting, selling, offering for sale, storing or utilizing any of the plaintiff’s courses.
Background
The plaintiff, Jainemo Private Limited, was a company engaged in preparation and sale of educational material and vocational courses on coding, computer programming, website development, etc. The plaintiff’s website was accessed by a large number of persons who wanted to avail courses distributed and taught by the plaintiff.
The plaintiff submitted that the course material offered by them were under the name ALPHA, DELTA and ALPHA PLUS (‘plaintiff’s courses’) and these courses trained candidates in various skills which enabled them to obtain placements in large number of established companies and business. The plaintiff’s courses were accessed through a website on payment of the requisite fee and the study materials were in the form of recorded videos, live sessions, recording of live sessions, assignment questions, reading material, question banks, etc. The plaintiff submitted that their course materials were not downloadable and it could only be downloaded if the party deliberately attempted to download such course material.
The plaintiff submitted that the creation, editing and uploading of each video involved extensive creativity, time, effort, and dedication. The plaintiff’s employees meticulously curated the course material and thus, the plaintiff claimed that their courses qualified as original copyrighted work as per Sections 13 and 14 of the Copyright Act, 1957 (‘the Act’).
In early September 2023, the plaintiff realised that a large number of known and unknown entities had started distributing the plaintiff’s courses on various platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube. The plaintiff submitted that these defendants were also collecting fees ranging from Rs. 500 to Rs. 1000 to include them on the said groups.
Thus, the plaintiff filed an application under Order 39 Rules 1 and 2 of CPC to restrain the defendants from unlawfully sharing copyrighted materials.
Analysis, Law, and Decision
The Court relied on Neetu Singh v. Telegram FZ LLC, 2022 SCC OnLine Del 2637, wherein the challenges arising from unauthorised use and sharing of video lectures, books and other educational materials on the Telegram platform was addressed and opined that in the present case as well, the defendants had used various techniques to communicate and distribute the plaintiff’s courses, videos and course materials.
The Court opined that the challenge on digital platforms was that the copying and reproduction of these course materials were made quite easy. Further, on perusal of the record, the Court noted that each group or channels on these platforms had hundreds of subscribers. Moreover, the defendants were also collecting large amount of money to freely distribute the copyrighted material of the plaintiff.
The Court opined that in the present case, the plaintiff held ownership over the course material, which fell within the category of ‘literary works’ under Section 2(o) of the Act and the videos on various subjects qualified as ‘cinematographic films’ under Section 2(f) of the Act. Further, Section 14 of the Act acknowledged exclusive rights that belong to the copyright holder. Thus, the Court opined that since the plaintiff’s work were safeguarded by the Act, therefore any unauthorized distribution or communication would amount to copyright infringement.
The Court opined that the balance of convenience lied in the plaintiff’s favour and irreparable harm would be cause if the infringing activity was allowed to continue. If the defendants were not blocked from disseminating the plaintiff’s copyrighted material, the plaintiff would suffer enormous monetary loss including loss of subscribers and goodwill. Thus, the Court opined that a case had been established for grant of an injunction to prevent further distribution of the plaintiff’s copyrighted material.
Accordingly, the Court restrained Defendants 1-14, 24, 25, 29 and 30 from downloading, uploading, storing, sharing, transmitting, selling, offering for sale, storing or utilizing any of the plaintiff’s courses on any electronic platforms, digital platforms including Telegram channels, WhatsApp groups, YouTube, Google Drive, Mega or any other multimedia messaging or social media platforms or file sharing websites or cloud storage platforms which resulted in infringement of copyright in the plaintiff’s courses.
Further, with respect to the Telegram, the Court opined that the channel details which were mentioned in the plaint would be provided to the telegram within three days so that it can block these channels within 72 hours. The Court directed the Telegram to disclose all the details available of the individuals or entitles operating these channels, so that they should be impleaded as the defendants in the present suit and such details should only be used for the purposes of the present suit and no other purposes. If any new Telegram channels surface in future, the details of the channels should be provided to Telegram which should take action accordingly.
With respect to YouTube, the Court directed the plaintiff to communicate to Google LLC the details of the YouTube channel ‘Show Time’ with the logo 
to be taken down and details of the person running this channel should also be provided to the plaintiff within one week.
The Court directed GoDaddy.com to lock and suspend the domain name ‘www.Freesoff.com’ and provide details of the registrant of the said domain name within one week.
The Court further directed Defendant 23, Name Cheap Inc to provide details of the domain name registrant of Defendant 1, 13 and 14 i.e., www.hacktack.com, www.classcentral.com, www.freecourseuniverse.com respectively and the said domain names should also be blocked and suspended. The Court directed Defendant 15, Mediafire to take down file sharing link which contained the infringed content and further deactivated mobile numbers of Defendant 1 and 2 on WhatsApp due to infringement. Lastly, the Court directed Defendant 29, to disband the WhatsApp group ‘JAVA Alpha Placement Batch’ created by him.
The matter is further listed before the Court on 22-02-2024.
[Jainemo Pvt. Ltd v. Rahul Shah, 2023 SCC OnLine Del 6136, Order dated 27-09-2023]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Plaintiff: Karan Bajaj, Rupin Bahl and Pooja Arora, Advocates;
For the Defendants: Anushka Sharda, Madhav Khosla, Moha Paranjpe, Advocates; Tejas Karia, Swati Agarwal, Mohit Singh, Vaarish Sawlani and Ritika Bansal, Advocates; Aditya Gupta, Raunaq Kamath, Aishwarya Kane and Sauhard Alung, Advocates; Mrinal Ojha, Debarshi Dutta, Anand Raja, Tanya Chaudhry, Samyak Bilala, Shivam Tiwari, Advocates
