In connection to the Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd (BCCL) filing a criminal complaint against journalist Arnab Goswami, the Delhi High Court has issued a notice to the former Times Now Editor-in- chief for breaching employment contract and misusing the intellectual property (IP) of the media conglomerate.
BCCL had filed a criminal complaint against Goswami, as he had played the audio tapes of stories related to Sunanda Pushkar and Lalu Yadav, which were ‘procured and accessed’ by Goswami and Prema Sridevi, while they both were working with Times Now, a BCCL-owned company. They had aired these tapes on their channel, Republic TV, which the two journalists had recently co-founded.
BCCL’s internal inquiry indicated that both these ‘exposes’ were done using resources the two had acquired while working in Times Now.
BCCL has accused Arnab and Prema of willfully and deliberately using Times Now intellectual property and sought prosecution under section 403, for violating the IP Rights.
MK Anand, CEO of Times Now said, “the management discovered these thefts only when it was aired on Republic TV. It is sad that a man of his stature has turned into a thief and stolen content from Times Now to launch his own channel. This obviously was well planned since he used both these stories in the first three days of the launch.”
Section 66B of IT Act says that anyone who “dishonestly receives or retains any stolen computer resource or communication device knowing or having reason to believe the same to be stolen computer resource or communication device,” shall be punished with up to three years’ imprisonment or fined up to Rs 1 lakh, or both.
