Data theft is quite a common phenomena in local search business and JustDial has sued Infomedia’s newly launched portal, Askme.in for content theft.
JustDial has obtained an exparte injunction against Infomedia 18 Limited, restraining it from carrying out any business or rendering any service of providing information of business, services, and products, through their newly launched website askme.in.![askme_logo[1]](http://www.pluggd.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/askme_logo1.gif "askme_logo[1]"){kind=logo}
The High Court has also appointed commissioners to visit Infomedia 18 Ltd’s office in Delhi and Mumbai and to seize and take into custody all the CPUs, compact, floppy discs and/or other storage media containing any part of the commercial or business directory database belonging to Just Dial(source).
Recently, Travelocity Filed FIR against Cleartrip for Data Theft and as Internet matures in India, do expect more of such stories to come out (and if you are a data company, keep an eye on bots that visit you).
To me, these are good signs of the industry (without drawing any conclusion on the case) – companies are becoming serious about their data and are taking steps to protect them.
In fact, I know of an interesting story where a content startup, after realizing that whole lot of media companies have started copying their data pushed some fake content – and as expected, even that fake content was pushed online by media companies (includes some big names). Wanna guess what happened next?
This is really a good sign..
“The High Court has also appointed commissioners to visit Infomedia 18 Ltd’s office in Delhi and Mumbai and to seize and take into custody all the CPUs, compact, floppy discs and/or other storage media containing any part of the commercial or business directory database belonging to Just Dial”
I am not commenting on the merits of this particular case but the High Court’s actions are scary and possibly wrong at so many levels. What if it was a small startup wrongly accused. What if it was data hosted on a cloud at another small startup within India.
very pertinent observation. a startup wud be dealt a death blow b4 proven guilty or not.
Couldn’t agree more with Tarun. This is very scary.
This is standard operating procedure of JustDial for removing competitors. They have tried this, with success, with quite a few local search players – in most such cases, even if the other player is right, the cost of lawsuit has perhaps helped JustDial win the case outright. I’m aware of some players too, that have fought back with proof that JustDial’s lawsuit is wrong in many, many ways and in those cases, JustDial has quietly recoiled its tail and went back to their hiding spot. IMO, this is terrible way to play in a market, but JustDial continues to play this – check out their news archives of such ‘wins’. The ones that they lost are known to those who won and their PR agencies alone
Hey Karthik
This looks to be a serious breach of data security. Dont think that Justdial will take on a co. from the stable of Network18 group without a strong case / solid proof. But its still early days to pass a judgment.
It would be shameful for the stagnant internet industry if either of the scenarios (askme scrapping data / justdial slapping a frivolous case) is proved to be correct.
Agree. Just that my opinion is colored by the fact that I was closely involved with another player who was sued – at that time I had found that JustDial had also trolled the sued-player’s database extensively, perhaps to check for infringement. But the point is this – both are working on data that could be gathered easily with a group of people, using a phone and a directory. Once someone gets a number, all they need to do is make a few calls, physical check and collect data that is required based on a particular service. How JustDial proves that the data is unique to itself will be interesting to see.
This is what TOI has to say.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Court-relief-for-city-firm-in-copyright-case-/articleshow/5521626.cms
@Karthik it’s not EASY to COLLECT a database and maintain it. Don’t assume it to be a simple mechanical job. It’s a painstaking process which can take years.
hey GBS, Karthik & sinha.
first thing to sue a big corporate you need big money more than solid proof. If you do some R&D you can find there is huge similarity in the data of guruji.com and justdial (including the errors). So why Justdial haven’t sue Guruji so far? Just because both the companies are backed by same venture capitalist! May be another option is that both the sites have copied data from some source, some thing 100 times bigger than JustDial. Does any thing clicks in your mind. Yes it is the good old TATA Yellopages (now Infomedia YellowPages)
To my knowledge JustDial is not in the business of data theft. They have actually collected most of the information that is on their site by handing out forms to employees and agents who got incentives for providing the data.
Dear Karthik,
This is a criminal case of data theft. The said company has copy pasted the entire data of Just Dial including internal dummy and test contracts. If you want to do well in Life listen to your conscience, work hard and believe in your self. Earn a good name for yourself.
Please do no jump into conclusions without any knowledge about the case. You will never be able to live up to your parents expectation. Remember this old indian saying ‘Man’s poor deeds affects his children”. This saying will haunt you for a life time.
I also feel action of court is needed in such cases as not only
far more money is spent to collect such data in addition to the
tremendous efforts taken by the employes of the organisation to
collect such pricious data and above all many a times the data
provider (say customer) may not like to disclose his detail and
many a times data collection agency promises that such data will
not be given to others to avoid the span.
Ashish,
How would Justdial track the data theft??? I mean a lot of local search sites have the same data .. right?
guys..have worked for Nw18 …know the ask me team…
thing is they have been for the last 2 years compiling all the yellow pages database..and scanning all competitors…then comes Burrp…who decides to power up all the searches ( coz they themselves have no business model besides ad space selling ) …they train the ask me team to look for content on the web…and the team does a brilliant copy paste job…and ask me gets launched .
Deap ubhi who is planning to quit network 18 …starts boasting and diverts all company resources to ask me ..has no regard for indian law …and creates the mess…has even made burrp into a local search engine rigth from plumbers directory to medical shops and florists…Now this pisses of Just dial…
they scan the ask me directory…realise..” oh no..this is all ours ” and file a court case..
so basically all Infomedia has done in the last 2 years is bought burrp ( out of compulsion ) and created ask me..which did full justice to the word Xerox….!!!
justdial is a company who scares from competition my friend have done work with justdial and left it because this company does not have respect for its employees and does not give salary and incentives on time or if give it than does not give what they promise to their employees.
if you r talking about data base theft than justdial is the biggest database theft company they are doing it since 14 years. if they put any data on their portal they dont take any kind of permission from business owner specially from non metros (which includes more than 230 cities on their justdial.com)
I don’t see how JustDial steals data because they don’t take permission of business owner. They are helping the owner of a business by putting his number for free. They don’t extort money to put someone’s number.
@Abhijit: Look like you are from JD team…
Anyway some of the search queries are not accurate most of the time for JD search and it’s simply unbelievable that JD has not a single record scraped 
They have already done it very smartly and now they are questioning others.. Simply they scares from competition.. whether you accept it or not.
I am the co-founder of AroundMe.in, it’s new startup company in the same domain which will be launched Q2,2010. I wounder how big companies try to copy the whole database where in we wanted to have the category names also different n unique from all our competitors. Moreover you will see different channels of interaction with enduser which is not there in these sites.
Thanks
Vishal | iFutureConsulting@gmail.com
I cant accept the the media companies are doing theft from the just dial, because its an open information , its a media wherein any one can login for any information .Its the database of any Business person in any cities.And not only just dial all the on-line media will be having the same database because they were making ____with only business people.If they take the database also it will the same what othermedia also have because it also the information media it may be an on-line are Telephonic media.
If we all think that ask me has copied the data its just for the publicity i can say. If its the theft just dial can do only one thing by blocking the site, if they really don’t want any one to take their data base. As i said before I hope all media have the same database.If its the theft about the database , i have a question,,, that comparatively with other media just Dial is the only company which have all the business people database. If that is true is it mean that all media business data what they are having is not validated data. What exactly justdial means………..
@No More ASkingMe – you know why they fired you from NW18? Because none of your sentences make any sense.
Eg 1. “then comes Burrp…who decides to power up all the searches ( coz they themselves have no business model besides ad space selling )” – What has searching a website got to do with a business model?
Eg 2. “they train the ask me team to look for content on the web”. What? under which rock was the ask me team living under? Didn’t they know about Google?
Eg 3. “they scan the ask me directory…realise.. oh no..this is all ours and file a court case..”. You mean someone at JD goes, aaawww shatttt, this phone number for ICICI customer support on ask me matches the one on our website. How can they copy ICICI’s customer support number?
dude, better get your facts right. and also since the case is sub-judice don’t try to play judge on this one. take it easy and wait till you see who takes the last laugh.
btw, I am neither in the AM or the JD camp. Just cannot tolerate this stupid personal slander or incongruous commenting on a site like pluggd.in.
let decision will come, then only people will come to know about the truth face of just dail and infomedia.SEe i read one article in which it has been mentioned that infomedia is having 300000 lac data base wherew as Just dail is having only 1,00,000 data base of customers.and as per as business is concern just dail claiming as a number 1 search engine weare as infomedia tryied to positioned ask me as a largest local search engine. apart from that just dail have been generating revenue since 1996 by this search engione so the main reson behind the sue could be sudden revenue fall of just dail. if just dail can delay this case for 1 month or 2 month or may one year.one year he can get revenue but if de4cxision comes in favour of ask me then just dail will be loosing market share but if just dail wins then it will be more stronger…….see whats happening ….BECOZ i dont know future ….so let court do there work
Dear ignorant Bharati & Others in this forum,
I have the following info to remove your ignorance. And this is from a very reliable source.
* Justdial has more paying customers than all local search company put together.
*Their revenue grew more than 50% yoy.
*Askme.in has practically negligble web traffic and zero voice traffic to claim its self largest local search.
*Justdial’s local search is used by more than half a million Indians every day including people like you.
*The court has rejected AskMe’s second appeal to vacate the injunction.
Justdial has rejected data sharing offers from Google,Yahoo, Rediff, MSN
and other small time local search Upstarts in the country.
Pray that such type Indian companies make a name in international market. Please eschew this crab mentality pulling down entities that do good work.
Either you are representing Infomedia and you don’t care for justice or you are a frustrated wannabe entrepreneur simply jealous successful businesses.
The site is live. How come?