Delhi HC Orders Blocking Of Telegram Channels, Deactivation Of WhatsApp Numbers Illegally Sharing Course Materials Of ‘Apna College’ Platform

The Delhi High Court has restrained various entities from circulating or sharing the course materials of online education platform “Apna College” on WhatsApp groups, telegram and YouTube channels.

Justice Prathiba M Singh was dealing with Apna College’s suit alleging infringement of its copyrighted content by 17 defendant entities who were disseminating its courses, including printed course materials, videos, etc. on social media platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube.

It was Apna College’s case that the course material offered by it is under the name ALPHA, DELTA and ALPHA PLUS which is given in the form of recorded videos, live sessions, recording of live sessions, assignment questions, reading material and question banks.

Passing an ad-interim injunction order, Justice Singh directed that the details of Telegram channels or handles, as mentioned in the plaint, be provided to the social media platform so that it can block them within 72 hours.

“Telegram shall also disclose the details of individuals/entity or any other details available with it such as email addresses, phone numbers etc. of the persons/entities running/operating these channels. Upon receiving such details, the said Defendants shall be impleaded in the present suit. These details shall only be used for the purposes of the present suit, and no other purposes,” the court said.

It also directed that if any new Telegram channels or other backup channels surface in future, their details shall be provided to Telegram which shall take action accordingly.

While doing so, Justice Singh relied upon her last year judgment in the case Neetu Singh v. Telegram FZ LLC which related to the issue of unauthorised use and sharing of video lectures, books and other educational materials on the Telegram.

The court observed that even in the case in hand, the defendant entities had used various techniques in order to communicate and disseminate Apna College’s courses, videos and course material.

Furthermore, the court also directed Google LLC to take down the YouTube channel ‘Show Time’ containing infringing copyrighted works of Apna College. It also ordered suspension of various impugned domain names such as www.hacktack.com, www.classcentral.com, www.freecourseuniverse.com.

Justice Singh ordered deactivation of whatsapp numbers of two individuals who were sharing all the lectures and pdf questions of Apna College on the application.

The court also directed that the group ‘JAVA Alpha Placement Batch’ created by an individual shall be disbanded by WhatsApp.

Justice Singh further directed Mediafire, a file hosting application, to take down the file sharing link containing Apna College’s infringing content.

“The challenge on digital platforms is that the copying and reproduction of these course material is made quite easy. The Court has perused the record and it is seen that each of the groups/channels on the platforms have hundreds of subscribers. The Defendants are also collecting large sums of money to freely distribute the copyrighted material of the Plaintiff,” the court said.

It added that the defendant entities were “enticing students and candidates” to subscribe to their channels, if they did not wish to pay the fee of Apna College.

“If the Defendants are not blocked from disseminating the copyrighted material of the Plaintiff, the Plaintiff would suffer enormous monetary loss apart from loss of subscribers and of goodwill. A case has been established for grant of an injunction to prevent further dissemination of the Plaintiff’s copyrighted material,” the court said.

Title: JAINEMO PRIVATE LIMITED v. RAHUL SHAH AND OTHERS

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Del) 913

Click Here To Read Order