Netherlands firm alleges copyright violation by Noida-based subsidiary company

Based on the complaint, an FIR against six people, including the former director of the company, has been registered under sections of cheating, IT Act and Copyright Act, police said, adding that all suspects are residents of Noida

A Netherlands-based software development company has filed a complaint with Noida police alleging that the employees of its Indian subsidiary company in Noida, got access to its source code and sold it to a rival company based in Dubai, senior police officers said on Wednesday.

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Based on the complaint, an FIR against six people, including the former director of the company, has been registered under sections of cheating, IT Act and Copyright Act, police said, adding that all suspects are residents of Noida.

As per the complaint, it cost the company around ₹20 crore and it took two years to develop the source code.

“However, employees of our Indian subsidiary company, based in Sector 127, Noida, sold the code to a Dubai-based company for wrongful gain,” alleged the complainant.

The complaint filed by Akashdeep Sharma, representative of the Netherlands-based company, said, “This company mainly builds software for customers working in the manufacturing sector. The engineers/employees of the company generate the source code for these software. Source code is an integral part of a software, without which no person can create another software of that kind. Software and source code are the property of the Company and only the Company has the right to sell or commercially rent its copies.”

It further said, “The suspects, in collusion, transferred the entire source code to another private Gitlab account under very suspicious circumstances and from there they unauthorizedly manipulated and copied the company’s source code and shared it with the Dubai-based company and other unidentified people. The suspects made unauthorized copies of the source code in furtherance of their collective conspiracy to cause harm to the company and to illegally benefit themselves.”

Noida police said six individuals have been booked in the FIR. Except for one, the other five are employees of the Indian subsidiary company, they said.

“An FIR under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (Cheating), 468 (Forgery for purpose of cheating) and section 66D of Information Technology (Amendment) Act 2008 and section 63B of the Copyright Act, 1957 has been registered in Sector-126 police station,” said Shakti Avasthy, additional deputy commissioner of police, Noida.

He said, “The investigation is underway and the decision on arrests will be taken later on the basis of evidence.”

The suspects named in the FIR could not be reached immediately for a comment.