In an on-going case in the Delhi High Court, PepsiCo has sought permanent injunction against Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Google to take down/ remove/ block a list of URLs / web links which contain a video disparaging PepsiCo’s brand KURKURE. In the video, KURKURE is claimed to be made out of plastic and to prove the same, the snack is being burnt so that it melts, and compelling the audience to believe that it is, indeed, made out of plastic. The company has constantly replied to tweets, posts and such links in order to break through the stereotype of KURKURE being made out of plastic, but having failed to do, have brought the case to the court.
Since, the identity of persons who have uploaded the video remains unknown, the court issued John Doe / Ashok Kumar interim injunction on 1st of June 2018 and asked Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to remove all links and posts that contains false allegations and are defamatory to the brand KURKURE. The injunction is ordered to continue till the next hearing of the court, i.e, 14th of November 2018.
This is not the first time that a company has sought injunction against social media posts disparaging its reputation, but never has a relief been sought against such a large number of web links, which in this case span to 3142 links and 20244 posts of Facebook, 242 links of YouTube, 6 links of Instagram and 562 links of Twitter, as filed in the plaint. It is now to be seen how the courts renders the final verdict, after granting the interim injunction.
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Contributors to present post are Abhilasha and Radhika.
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