BackDelhi high court asks Exim India to stop copying Mint articles
Delhi high court asks Exim India to stop copying Mint articles
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New Delhi: A Delhi high court judge has issued an interim order asking Exim India, which publishes www.eximin.net, to immediately stop publishing articles that HT Media Ltd has alleged are blatant copies of articles already published in Mint.
In an ex-parte interim order, justice Vipin Sanghi ruled that “prima facie, there appears to be marked similarity" to articles that Mint has been publishing on the shipping industry, written by P. Manoj.
HT Media, which publishes Mint, has submitted several articles as part of its lawsuit, which is also seeking Rs20 lakh in damages from www.eximin.net for copyright violations.
Justice Sanghi wrote in his order that, after perusal of articles in Mint and those published on the Exim India website, he “found it difficult to, prima facie, accept that the same is a mere coincidence. It appears that the defendant (Exim India) is making cosmetic changes by use of slightly different phraseology while retaining the content of the articles published by the plaintiff (HT Media)."
The judge goes on to note that “it also appears that the articles of the plaintiff are published first... the defendant does not give the name of the author in the articles it publishes (on www.eximin.net). All these factors, prima facie, establish the infringement of the plaintiff’s copyright by the defendants."
On its website, Exim India claims it is “a reputed and all-India recognised premier publishing house" that publishes daily newspapers Exim Newsletter and Shipping Times, focused on news, views and reviews related to shipping, ports, maritime trade, imports and exports in India and abroad. The site claims the combined circulation/readership of all editions is over 130,000 copies a day.
Two separate calls to Exim’s Mumbai headquarters did not elicit a response for this story. A Mint reporter was told that she would be called back with a response but no such calls were received.
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