The Delhi High Court has granted an exparte injunction against askme.in ordering them to stop business and ordering the seizing of their machines and storage after justdial filed a case against them. From what I understand from googling[1], an ex parte injunction is a court order granted after hearing only one party in matters of great urgency, without notice to the defendant or other parties.

This doesn't bode well for the start up climate in India. Soesn't this mean that any established company could sue me and my machines would be seized pending the results of the case.

[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=ex+parte+injunction

Yes, ex parte anything means the judge(s) only listened to one side of a dispute, and as one of the Just Dial people noted, they're rare. For this sort of case, unheard of in the US.

It does sound very bad, especially given that Indian courts aren't noted for speed.

Could this be due to bribery, or political connection?

In India? Doesn't seem unreasonable.

I've heard Indian coworkers practically brag about how corrupt their officials are.

You may want to be weary of those co-workers of yours. People who think they can get away with anything because they have "connections" are corrupt themselves.

/an Indian.

"practically brag" is a bit of a colloquialism. It doesn't mean that they were proud of it, just emphatically suggesting that something is true.

I doubt that. High court (and law offices, in general) are clean in India.

Are you sure?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_India#Corrupti...

The question answers itself, I'd say.

Hmm, would the company have its DR/backup servers seized as well? And what if the servers are in the US or cloud-based?

Infomedia 18 can hardly be called a startup; its parent company is joint-partner in the TV channel "CNBC TV18" plus they own a host of other businesses.

Yep. Network18 is practically the Google of businesses in India :)

I think this can happen everywhere?

I wonder how to protect against it. Maybe having backup servers in several countries is the only way?

I've never heard of something like this happening in the US, the Fifth Amendment has a well enforced provision blocking this, "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Ex parte orders "will necessarily be temporary and interim in nature" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte).

In this sort of case, the plaintiffs would have to show some sort of massive irreparable harm that must be remedied so quickly that the other side cannot be afforded notice and an opportunity to be heard. I can't see how this sort of case would (in the US) rise to that level.

The only possible exception would be massive bad faith from the other side's lawyer(s) ... one real instance of this that I've heard of was where the lawyer on one side was caught burglarizing the business office of the other side. Maybe Infomedia 18's legal team was showing bad faith of some sort, but it doesn't sound like it based on the cited article.

What about piracy allegations, or child porn? Wouldn't police have to grab servers quickly before their owner has a chance to erase things? I think it can happen in Germany. Not sure how solid the accusations have to be.

Child porn is criminal and has nothing to do with civil law.

Piracy in the way you're talking about it is also criminal law, i.e. you are getting the authorities to preemptively intervene for you. If you just need proof, their copying disks is sufficient, you wouldn't need to seize everything. This is in fact an alleged piracy case.

Civil law would come into play where you're trying to get an injunction to stop someone from continuing to commit piracy, e.g. Apple v. Psystar, where that sort of thing was handled in discovery.

What do you mean by copying disks? I think the police would like to check all servers for traces of illegal material. I find it shocking that it's possible, but then, we are always at the mercy of our governments.

What I mean is make disk image copies. That would be impractical for a big enough outfit, but I didn't gather something like this was needed, "Just Dial alleged that Infomedia 18 had copied its extensive database and was displaying the same on its website askme.in".

That's relatively easy to prove or disprove, they're alleged to be basing their business (or a part of it) on the stolen database. And the harm to Just Dial can be ended without shutting down all of Infomedia 18.

"[W]e are always at the mercy of our governments", but some governments are less arbitrary than others, and this does seem to correlate with healthy business climates.

Maybe India doesn't want to have a startup culture?

Obviously we don't know all the facts but if it turns out that Just Dial is wrong and Infomedia 18 is innocent, the court will have egg (?curry?) on its face. In which case there should be some harsh downside for Just Dial like, say, reimbursing Infomedia 18 for lost revenue, plus damages.

As a general rule I don't like ex parte hearings for all the obvious reasons. There needs to be a means to limit their use, and a heavy fine for being wrong is about all that comes to mind.

> In which case there should be some harsh downside for Just Dial like, say, reimbursing Infomedia 18 for lost revenue, plus damages.

That seems entirely reasonable to me; I might even go further and suggest the original plaintiff pay punitive damages. Furthermore, there should be no limitation of liability for Just Dial, apart from the limit of the actual damage they caused.