Indian court orders seizing a startup's machines based solely on allegations
news.oneindia.in
news.oneindia.in
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.
It does sound very bad, especially given that Indian courts aren't noted for speed.
I've heard Indian coworkers practically brag about how corrupt their officials are.
/an Indian.
I wonder how to protect against it. Maybe having backup servers in several countries is the only way?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.