Data theft is a wide term ranging for theft and fraud committed by stealing most valuable information. The purpose is to obtain data without any financial as well as manpower investments. Most national systems have gradually moved in the direction of providing protection to computer software and database under Copyright Law. In India too, Indian Copyright Act 1957 recognizes any computer program including data base as literary work under Section 2(a).

A recent case before the Delhi High Court has brought the issue of data theft to the fore again. An earlier case involving theft of an entire database was decided by the High Court in when naukri.com alleged copying of their entire listings by baazee.com through linking and framing, where the court fixed liabilities on bazee for their act of breach. Data theft involves issues of copyright violation, violation of privacy under IT Act 2000, as well criminal breach of trust and dishonest misappropriation under Indian Penal Code, 1860. In the present dispute, it was alleged by JUSTDIAL, a very popular multipurpose local search engine, that their extensive and valuable database was copied by Infomedia 18 limited, on their website askme.in. They moved the High Court against ‘ASKME.IN’ for breach of copyright with respect to database. JUST DIAL submitted that Infomedia 18, group company of TV 18, had substantially copied the data base of just dial, which was evident from the reproduction of same mistakes in the database of askme.in. They contended that a minimum of 14 yrs were spent in producing the data base and a lot of resource was put in for the same.

The Court recognised the seriousness of the matter and opined that the plaintiff would be put to irreparable loss if askme.in continued to replicate the database. Hence, an exparte injunction was granted against Infomedia 18, restraining them from infringing the said copyright and from running the website askme.in till the next date of hearing. At the same time, the court appointed local commissioners to visit the premises of the defendant in Delhi and Mumbai, and seize all the hardware and storage devices containing any part of the commercial or business directory database belonging to JUST DIAL. The matter has been listed to be heard on a later date.

Another matter which focused on database theft was in the curious case of Travelocity filing an FIR against Amit Taneja, former MD of Desiya and Stuart Crighton CEO of Cleartrip and alleged criminal breach of trust, data theft and misappropriation and criminal conspiracy.

This indicates that the technological advances that were developed to improve the access to and flow of information have also significantly increased the potential for information abuse.