In a “first of its kind case”, four IBA students have been put behind bars for infringing copyrights and intellectual property rights, a statement issued by AMZ MAK Capital Ltd has said.
The dispute started when four founders launched a financial portal “Investor’s Lounge“, which was successfully incubated at Pasha’s NEST I/O and was able to secure funding from Arpatech Ventures as well.
AMZ MAK, the complainant, alleges that founders of “Investor’s Lounge” were its former employees, namely Baqar Abbas Jafri, Sennen D’Souza and Hammad Ali Hashmi along with Waqar Ehsan, who — along with 12 other team members — were given the task to develop an Investor’s Social Media platform.
Mir Muhammad Ali Khan, the force behind AMZ MAK, told ProPakistani that Baqar Jafri, the main guy behind “Investor’s Lounge” instead stole the entire code (worth Rs. 14 million) and idea to launch his own platform with minor modifications.
On the other hand, Jehan Ara, Chairman PASHA and the face of NEST I/O, while speaking with ProPakistani said that “Investor’s Lounge” was developed before her eyes when it was incubated at NEST.
AMZ MAK Capital, after becoming aware of the alleged fraud, approached the Sindh court and after establishing the facts before the judge was allowed to proceed further which resulted in the arrest of the four founders.
The case will now be heard in court to determine the outcome.
“Investor’s Lounge” is still in process of preparing a media response on the matter. We will update the story when and if we get any word from them.
Update
The management of “Investor Lounge”, in a press statement, has said that Mr Baqar, along with his team, created new and original software code for Investors Lounge portal with the assistance of shared content recently purchased from recognized vendors with the specific intention of using such shared content for Investors Lounge only.
Investor Lounge said that it categorically denies the claims that any intellectual property or software code used in Investors Lounge has been illegally obtained or infringes the copyright of any third party.
Investor Lounge also carried Jehan Ara’s quote, in which she said: “This is a false accusation. I know these youngsters personally and the product was created from scratch at The Nest i/o. It is heartbreaking and totally unjust that these young entrepreneurs who have struggled so much and worked so hard to get to this stage should be put through this. I stand by them.”
