A legal battle has started between OLX and Pakwheels over intellectual property theft and copyright violation. OLX claims that pakwheels had been copying certified ads and other data from their website, that have misguided and spam OLX users. OLX filed a complaint with competition commission of Pakistan in this regard.
Regional head of OLX middle east, north africa and pakistan, bilal bajwa have said that the committee should better look upon privacy and copyright matters He demands that honorable court would take legal action and forbids to prevail such acts in future.
“This case is about OLX fighting to protect the privacy of our users as well as our significant investment in marketing” Bilal bajwa said.
OLX said that Pakwheels have stolen product pictures from their website which have OLX watermark on them. On the other hand Pakwheels have denied all accusations and explained that these ads with OLX logo were posted on pakwheels by users in order to grab large audience. Pakwheels clarifies anyone can copy and post them on the website and it has nothing to do with company.
“Their primary argument is that PakWheels is using the OLX logo to further our brand, which is ridiculous because two competitors will never use each other´s logo. There are countless examples of PakWheels logo appearing on the OLX site as well, users must have uploaded the ads using images from their ad on PakWheels.com”
While talking to Propakistani, Raza saeed CEO of Pakwheels said that,
“As a matter of fact, there are ads on OLX that have PakWheels logo on them”
and in response to these comments Bilal bajwa said, Bilal Bajwa,
“I can give an underwriting that we never copy ads from other websites and that there’s no automatic process of replicating ads from other resources.”
Evidence given by OLX lawyer in Court represented that Pakwheels contains OLX ads having trademark on them that directly point towards copyright violation.
Websites that contains user generated content may subjected to copyright violation but in this case, users is at liberty to copy other websites classified ads and can post them on multiple websites. So in this way anyone can copy data with company’s trademark to generate advertising content.
As a matter of fact, this case comes under DMCA (digital millennium copyright act), in USA they tackle copyright issue under protocol “Safe Harbor” in which user generated content will automatically blocked if subjected to violation. But no such acts and laws prevail here in Pakistan.
In an interview with Reuters Bilal Bajwa said,
“This case is about OLX fighting to protect the privacy of our users as well as our significant investment in marketing.”
Later, OLX wants to settle issue between them out of legal processes but Pakwheels have denied it.
“Our intention for local industry is to grow together in a manner that’s suitable for every market player”, Said Bilal.
However competition commission of Pakistan (CCP) will soon come to conclusion.