In a first of its kind ruling in Pakistan, Intellectual Property Tribunal Lahore gave a ruling in favor of Rozee.PK and restrained RightJobs from copying any job postings from Rozee.
In an interim ruling, the tribunal asked RightJobs to remove all job postings that it had copied from Rozee and to refrain from any similar practices in future.
Rozee.PK had filed a copyright case against RightJobs before Intellectual Property Tribunal with a plea that RightJobs had been copying its job postings without its permission or the permission of the companies that posted the jobs originally on Rozee.
While hearing the case, the Tribunal issued an interim order and heavily restrained RightJobs from displaying, offering, advertising job postings copied from Rozee.PK.
Ruling also asked RightJobs to remove all previous job postings and also restrained from committing an act of unfair competition.
While we have seen instances of copyright protection for print and electronic media, Pakistan’s online space was largely considered a lawless land till now. Anyone could freely copy anyone’s content and build their online empires on content that’s produced by others.
This ruling is going to change that all.
With this new precedent set, Pakistan’s digital companies can seek justice by filing cases against any copyright violations.
In addition to revenue loss, these online copyright violations — in some cases — also pose serious security and privacy threats.
Unauthorized copying of jobs for instance, could expose personal information of applicants. We have in fact discussed how fake job postings are done to gather data for various unethical and illegal purposes.
Furthermore, employers are also at risk from such activities, as it not only hurts the image of their brand and the confidentiality of applicants, but also violates their rights to control where their representation exists, as they may find themselves associated with channels that they have not authorized to use their brand name.
“Rozee.PK puts great effort into protecting our job applicants by verifying the authenticity of all companies that post jobs on our website to safeguard their personal information,” said Monis Rahman, CEO of Rozee.PK.
“When jobs are copied from our site without permission by other third party sites, candidates unknowingly share their personal information with unauthorized sources and the underlying companies never see their applications. We are committed to safeguarding our members’ personal information at all costs and are hopeful that this landmark injunction will serve as a precedent to prevent similar violations for other online publishers.”
The awarding of an injunction against “Rightjob” by the Intellectual Property Tribunal is a victory for Pakistan on many fronts.
The decision is an encouraging gesture by the learned court to safeguard online copyrights and intellectual property in Pakistan, and allows for foreign investors to feel more secure when investing into the IT sector of the country.