IndiaMart & JD Mart Involved in Legal Battle over Copyright Infringement

Last month, Justdial, the 24-year old local discovery platform announced that the organization is going to place a new big bet by launching its own B2B (business to business) marketplace called JD Mart. It was expected that the new marketplace would give a direct competition to the country’s oldest e-Commerce platform IndiaMart, which has had an unchallenged run for 24 years. However, the situation right now is something different than expected. According to reports, IndiaMart has taken Justdial’s JD Mart to Delhi high court over copyright violations. The B2B e-Commerce platform has alleged that JustDial has copied the website compilations of the company.

In its court documents, Indiamart accused JustDial of slavish imitation of Indiamart’s compilations and listings which runs into several thousands of pages. Indiamart also alleged Just Dial (for JD Mart) has copied the design, presentation of the products of its various customers, which was earlier created by Indiamart.

JD Mart is currently in beta stage and will directly compete Indiamart after launch. The Delhi high court last week granted an ad interim injunction in favour of Indiamart. It also appointed local commissioners to conduct searches on Just Dial’s premises in Mumbai and Bengaluru and make an inventory of all the copies of the database in its website, mobile site and mobile

Indiamart accused JustDial of slavish imitation of Indiamart’s compilations and listings which runs into several thousands of pages

application with respect to the launch of the proposed JD Mart B2B project.

While from the court order in favour of IndiaMart, JD Mart’s launch was set to hit pause but Just Dial, in a regulatory filing on November 18 (Wednesday), has said the development of the product is on schedule with a beta version available and an official launch shall take place after seeking legal recourse. Just Dial also said it has built its database and brand over the last 25 years and called IndiaMart’s allegations ‘baseless.’

Talking about the issue Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, Indiamart stated “We didn’t expect such careless behaviour from a reputed, listed company. We would protect our data and intellectual property created over the last 20 years and wouldn’t want that to be misused. The matter is sub judice, so I can’t comment further".

In the same matter, Justdial went one step further and accused IndiaMart for illegal activities. “The Company would like to highlight the fact that Indiamart Intermesh Limited are themselves indulging in illegal activities in all possible manner by copying data/content of the Company, cybersquatting, etc. Presence of innumerable web pages on Indiamart Intermesh Limited’s live platforms, bearing the Company’s proprietary content and images bearing the Company’s watermark, has recently come to our notice. The Company is in the process of taking appropriate legal action to safeguard its interests from such malicious activities of Indiamart Intermesh Limited,” said Justdial in the filing.