Court to hear 'John Doe' case on April 5

NEW DELHI: For the first time in Indian Jurisprudence, the Delhi High Court has allowed a company to sue an IP address for sending offending e-mails.

The next hearing of the case is scheduled for April 5, when the service provider is expected to reply to the court's order.

Yahoo.co.in is the e-mail service provider and Bharti Infotel is the network/internet service provider in this case.

The court has admitted the petition submitted by Integrix (India) Private Ltd against a person of 'unknown' identity and has allowed the company to sue the person on the basis of the IP address from which the e-mail had been sent.

Advocate, Supreme Court, Pavan Duggal said that this is the John Doe concept of US where victims of cyberstalking or defamation file lawsuits against "John Does".

“This is the first time in the world that a company is allowed to sue an IP address for receiving defamatory mails,” Duggal said.

The right to speak anonymously on the Internet is substantially different from the right to remain anonymous in the face of alleged tortuous conduct on the Internet. Instances of abuse on bulletin boards and the spreading of false and pernicious rumors are far too numerous to mention.

In the financial sector, these deliberate falsehoods about companies often are designed to affect a company's stock.

Duggal said that the defendant in this case is ashokintegrix@yahoo.co.in, the e-mail address from where the company had received offending mails. The company is allowed to sue the ISP and the e-mail service provider.

“The company can file an FIR against the e-mail sender for sending offending mails. After which the police would carry out the investigation and interrogate both the Internet service provider and the e-mail provider,” he added.

Duggal added that it is not mandatory that the police would lodge the FIR since the defendant in this case in 'Unknown'.

However, law experts point out certain hurdles in this case. Experts say that when an individual opens an account with Yahoo or any e-mail provider, there is no confirmation that the identifying information he or she provides is correct.

In fact, there is nothing that prevents an individual from providing an ISP with false information. Thus, a subpoena to Yahoo alone might not necessarily result immediately in accurate information about the identity of a particular poster.

However, all users who access ISPs leave behind a telltale "electronic fingerprint." For example, when an individual signs on to Yahoo, he leaves behind information about his "IP address," which, in turn, identifies the computer server or system through which he is accessing that site.

By tracing this IP address back from Yahoo, a plaintiff can discover the source of the postings-whether that be another ISP or a plaintiff 's own servers (in the case of an employee poster).

There are procedural obstacles along the way, but once a plaintiff has obtained the court's initial blessing to conduct discovery, ISPs generally comply with the court's order without question and ultimately produce the information that leads to the identity of the anonymous tortfeasor.

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