Technology & Data Disputes

Your options depend on the terms of your agreement. If the agreement includes acceptance testing criteria and the deliverables have failed testing, you may have the right to reject the deliverables, demand re-performance, or terminate the agreement. You can claim damages for breach of contract, including the cost of engaging an alternative vendor and losses caused by delay. If the agreement includes a dispute resolution clause (arbitration or mediation), that will govern the process. If no formal agreement exists or the terms are ambiguous, your position is weaker but not without recourse. We advise on evaluating your contractual position, issuing appropriate notices, and pursuing remedies through negotiation, arbitration, or litigation.

Act immediately. Preserve all evidence of the employee’s access to and removal of data, including system logs, email records, and download histories. Engage forensic IT support if needed. Send a formal cease-and-desist notice demanding return of all confidential information and undertakings against further use or disclosure. If the risk of harm is immediate, apply for an urgent interim injunction. Depending on the circumstances, you may also have grounds for a criminal complaint under the IT Act (unauthorised access) or the BNS (criminal breach of trust). The strength of your case depends heavily on whether you had adequate confidentiality agreements and security policies in place before the breach occurred.

Data disputes between businesses and platforms typically turn on the contractual terms governing the relationship, including the terms of service, data processing agreements, and any negotiated commercial terms. Key questions include who owns the data (the user, the platform, or both), what access rights each party has, what happens to data on termination, and whether the platform can use the data for its own purposes such as model training or analytics. If the contract is clear, the dispute is a contractual one resolved through the agreed mechanism (usually arbitration). If the terms are ambiguous or unconscionable, the court may intervene. The DPDP Act and the Competition Act may also be relevant depending on the circumstances.

Potentially, yes. Data scraping can give rise to claims under multiple legal frameworks: copyright infringement (if the scraped content is an original database or literary work), breach of the website’s terms of use (if the terms prohibit scraping), the IT Act (if the scraping involves unauthorised access to a computer resource), and common law claims for misappropriation or unjust enrichment. The strength of each claim depends on the nature of the data, the method of scraping, the extent of the scraping, and the purpose for which the scraped data is used. Courts in India have granted injunctions against data scraping in appropriate cases.

Pre-dispute strategy involves identifying and managing legal risks before they crystallise into formal disputes. This includes reviewing contracts for potential vulnerabilities, preserving evidence, assessing the strength of potential claims and defences, and engaging in structured communication with the counterparty to explore resolution without litigation. The best time to engage a lawyer is before you send or respond to a threatening communication, not after the dispute has escalated. Early legal involvement often prevents disputes from reaching court at all, and where litigation is unavoidable, ensures that you are in the strongest possible position from the outset.