Bombay High Court vacates ex-parte order against PrepLadder in Medical Joyworks case

The Bombay High Court on Friday vacated the ex-parte ad-interim order passed by the Mumbai City Civil Court restraining PrepLadder from using the contents of a prognosis application and its contents claimed to have been developed by Medical Joyworks LLC. (PrepLadder Pvt Ltd v. Medical Joyworks LLC).The Mumbai City Civil Court had on Monday, passed an order ex-parte without hearing any of the respondents which included PrepLadder.The City Civil judge had also made an observation that prima facie PrepLadder seemed to have copied the interface of the application. Aggrieved by the order, PrepLadder filed appeal before the High Court through law firm IndusLaw. .Senior Advocates Virag Tulzapurkar and Birendra Saraf argued on behalf of PrepLadder..They submitted that City Civil Court had no jurisdiction to hear an issue pertaining to the intellectual property infringement. Any IP related civil suit has to be filed before the High Court on the original side, they submitted. .PrepLadder apprised the Court that a legal notice had been issued to them by MJL to which PrepLadder also issued a response. Pursuant to such exchange, PrepLadder had filed caveats in four courts - Bangalore, Delhi, Panchkula and Bombay.However, they had not filed a caveat in the City Civil Court with a belief that no case would be filed in that court.The suit was filed after a period of six weeks from the exchange of legal notices. .The counsel also informed the Court that the suit which had been filed after a period of 6 weeks from the exchange of notices had still not been served upon PrepLadder. MJL also did not give a notice to PrepLadder before the hearing and the City Court failed to record the reasons for granting an ex-parte order. .After briefly hearing the submissions of the counsel, Justice AS Gadkari proceeded to vacate the order. He also observed that having filed a case before the court where caveat was not filed, seemed like forum shopping. .In the suit filed before the City Civil Court, MJL claimed that PrepLadder had been misrepresenting and defrauding the public at large by systematically usurping the user interface of “Prognosis: Your Diagnosis”, a first of its kind simulation based tool aimed at providing evidence-based learning for medical students and other healthcare professionals worldwide..In light of the information, MJL filed a suit in the City Civil Court of Mumbai against Unacademy, PrepLadder and a string of other defendants including international financial backers such as Blume Venture Advisors, Sequoia Capital India, the SoftBank Vision Fund, and Temasek Holdings..Tulzapurkar and Saraf were assisted Counsel Hiren Kamod and advocates Amit Jajoo, Bhargav Kosuru and Darpan Bhatia from IndusLaw.