BENGALURU: The Delhi High Court on Monday granted an interim injunction in favour of coding startup White HatJr in a $2.6 million defamation suit filed by the firm against an ex-Cisco engineer Pradeep Poonia.
White HatJr's CEO and founder Karan Bajaj had filed a complaint against Poonia alleging copyright, trademark infringement, invasion of privacy by accessing a private communication app, Slack.
The Court has asked Poonia to take down the YouTube content as well as tweets, which display content from White HatJr's website, and told him to avoid commenting on the professional background of teachers employed by the startup.
"The HC directs Pradeep Poonia not to use, telecast or transmit any information received by hacking WhiteHat's server. Ad interim injunction granted to White HatJr from hacking or unauthorizedly accessing the internal communication platform Slack and displaying communication and chats between WhiteHat and its employees on his YouTube channel," the Delhi HC said.
The Court while registering the complaint has also sought replies from the parties within 30 days and video evidence to be filed in two weeks.
The judiciary came down heavily on Poonia stating that his allegations of White HatJr's teachers being uneducated and housewives amount to defamation.
Poonia, an ex-Cisco engineer and a civil services aspirant, had accused the startup of misleading kids and parents into believing that learning programming, coding will land them a job with an annual salary worth crores in a social media campaign. He had also charged them with influencing social media channels like YouTube, Linkedln, Facebook and Twitter to take down content criticizing White HatJr's teachers, advertisements and other promotional content.
Poonia's lawyers likened the startup's promotional strategy to the psychological abuse of children. They further informed the court that The Advertisement Campaign of India has also received 15 complaints against WhiteHat Jr's advertising practices.
White HatJr's lawyers told the HC that the founder Bajaj is an educator and a Yoga instructor and his company aims to teach the youngsters to innovate and think with the help of coding. Currently being used by millions of children worldwide, White HatJr offers a student or parents the option to opt out of courses after attending the first class.
White HatJr. which was recently acquired by edtech unicorn Byjus for $300 million within 18 months of it being set up, has reported a 90% jump in the users during the pandemic as online education demand peaked.
White HatJr's parent firm Byjus is reportedly in talks with US investment firms to raise $200 million at a $12 billion valuation.