Mumbai: In a landmark judgement that brought huge relief to the companies and firms that suffer huge losses over the alleged copyright violation, the Mumbai High Court restrained a website, askme.in from using the database of popular search engine, JustDial.com.

JustDial.com provides telephone numbers of various businesses and products. According to the company, askme.in took all its phone numbers stored in the directory and used them as its own, causing serious losses to JustDial.com.

JustDial.com argued that it has built a huge database of millions of telephone number with their hard work over the last 14 years. The company had filed a suit in Mumbai High Court and another before the Delhi High Court.

JustDial argued that its database was a literary work, as defied under the Copyright Act of 1957. They also cited examples of identical spelling mistakes in both databases. The judge was convinced beyond doubt that askme.in had illegally used the directory of justdial.com.

The court passed an injunction order, restraining askme.in from carrying out its business. The HC also appointed two officials in Delhi and Mumbai to seize all computer hardware used by askme.in to store the data developed by JustDial. The local police have been ordered to assist the officials in carrying out their work.