SAP AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT Vs. SADIQ PASHA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a suit seeking permanent injunction restraining infringement of copyright of the plaintiffs, delivery up of infringing material and rendition of accounts of profits, etc. Plaintiff No.1 is a company incorporated in Germany, whereas plaintiff No.2 is its Indian subsidiary, responsible for sales of SAP solutions, implementation, post-implementation support, training and certification of its customers and partners in India. Plaintiff No.1 claims to be global leader in developing application software products for real time business developing process and also claim to be world's largest inter-enterprise software company and world's third largest overall independent supplier. It employs nearly 30,000 people in 50 countries including India. It is alleged that in early 70s plaintiff No.1 developed RF System, an automatic accounting and transactionprocessing programme that featured standard software and real-time computing and later came to be referred as R/1.

(2.) This is also the case of the plaintiff that the software programme developed and marketed by them are "computer programmes" within the meaning of Section 2 (ffc) of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 and are also included in the definition of a "literary work" as per Section 2(o) of the Copyright Act. It is also alleged that both India and Germany are signatories of the Berne Convention, Universal Copyright Convention and WTO Agreement and, therefore, rights of the plaintiff companies are protected in India under Copyright Act. Defendant Sadiq Pasha is stated to be the proprietor of M/s. Neologik India and is stated to be engaged in the business of providing ERP/eCRM training services to its clients and also providing training programme in ERP software at Bangalore. It was found by the plaintiffs that on its website www.neologikindia.com the defendant was making offer for providing various training programmes in relation to plaintiffs' software products and had also been regularly advertising the training programmes offered by it with respect to the software programmes of the plaintiffs, especially on SAP R/3 and ABAP/4. It is also alleged that only a formal training agreement with the plaintiffs renders training license in respect of SAP software products and training packages are prohibited from being implemented as commercial industry solutions. It is claimed that there is not a single valid license granted by the plaintiffs to the defendant and, therefore, he has illegally obtained/installed and is using pirated/infringing software products belonging to the plaintiffs. It is further claimed that during the search operation on 19th October 2004 the police was able to recover two servers containing pirated software SAP R/3 Version 4.7 IDES which were being used for providing training on SAP software. Thereafter an e-mail was sent by the defendant to the plaintiff wherein he not only acknowledged use of plaintiffs' unlicensed software programmes but also admitted that despite raid by police he continue to conduct unauthorized training programme in SAP software. The plaintiffs have accordingly sought an injunction restraining the defendant from reproducing/installing and/or using pirated/unlicensed software programmes of plaintiff No.1, including SAP R/3 and ABAP/4 for the purpose of training or otherwise. They have also sought delivery up of the infringing material besides seeking rendition of accounts.

(3.) The defendant was proceeded ex parte vide order dated January 18, 2008.