After PayTM filed a lawsuit against Snapdeal owned eCommerce management firm Unicommerce, Delhi High Court has now restrained Unicommerce from using any data or information derived from the sellers of Paytm.
PayTM had accused Unicommerce of extracting data from the sellers on its platform who are using Unicommerce for managing their business. And even though the Snapdeal-owned entity has denied all the allegations, the court, along with restricting it to use data, has also directed the company to pull down its YouTube advertisement and/or modify it to remove the Paytm logo.
Commenting about this, Unicommerce said that:
reliefs sought (by Paytm) have not been granted. We welcome the honourable court’s interim order. While the matter is sub-judice, we believe that the allegations made are clearly unfounded and speculative.
The case is scheduled to be heard again in court on July 11, 2016.
Paytm has now restricted sellers on its platform to use Unicommerce for managing their business. In a blog post, Paytm said:
We discourage the use of Unicommerce! If we find any of our partners using Unicommerce services, we would take strict action including but not limited to imposing penalties or blocking the concerned partner entirely.
Unicommerce is an online multi channel order fulfilment platform which enables e-commerce merchants of all sizes to sell efficiently. It was founded by Ankit Pruthi, Vibhu Garg, Karun Singla and Manish Gupta in 2012 and was acquired by Snapdeal last year.
Paytm and Snapdeal are the biggest rivals in two of the most competitive spaces currently in India – payment and eCommerce. Interestingly, both are backed by Alibaba – the Chinese eCommerce giant.
Paytm’s lawsuit against unicommerce stems from another important factor. Nowadays, companies are relying heavy on data to study user behavior, measure and analyse business growth and predict future business trends. If the competitor can get their hands on the data, it can severely impact the business.
Companies are not afraid to drag the case to the court if necessary in order to protect their business data. Earlier, Uber had filed a petition against Ola for creating fake accounts, seeking damages of Ola’s act. The court had then asked ola to sign an
Prior to that, OYO Rooms also went to court alleging that rival ZO Rooms was stealing its software. However, two of them later decided to merge their business, virtually ending the legal battle
