The Delhi High Court has made a landmark ruling prohibiting four former employees from making use of their ex-employer’s proprietary data and confidential information. The ruling may set a precedent for Indian and international law. The decision may also become the basis for cases involving insiders and data breaches. According to experts at InfoWatch, the Indian authorities can now address those dishonest employees in the country’s outsourcing industry, making the business more attractive to international investors.
The court passed an injunction order against four lawyers, restraining them and their representatives from using in any manner the proprietary data and confidential information stolen from their former employer Titus & Co. Advocates. The ruling prohibits them from using “copied material” from their former firm, but allowed the four to continue their professional activities using the skills and information they had “retained mentally.”
The ruling has already been billed by experts around the world as a groundbreaking precedent. It is the first time that a high court has passed a verdict which states that employees do not have any right to take away any documents, information, data or other material (even if the employees worked wholly or partly on that material) produced during the course of their employment with the employing firm. The judgment defines the obligations of employees and has also provided valuable case law for cases of data breach by insiders in any workplace.
In the case in question, a Nigerian lawyer and his three Indian associates illegally copied and removed entire electronic records, protected documents, proprietary precedents and other confidential client information from the hard drives of the computer network systems belonging to Titus & Co. The four lawyers then established Lex Counsel, an operation of their own that relied heavily on the stolen data.
It is believed the court ruling will help the Indian IT industry win back the confidence and trust of foreign investors following a series of confidential data leaks and thefts last year that affected consumers around the world.
“The reinforcement of employer rights concerning any electronic or paper documents created inside the company is perfectly logical. The most important aspect here is that the court has formulated provisions whereby employees have no right to supply, sell or use their company’s information for their own ends or for those of a third party. Now Indian businesses can confidently take any insiders making money out of breaches of private data to court,” says Denis Zenkin, marketing director at InfoWatch.
Source: CRN India
