India: Facebook Appeals Against The Global Injunction Order By Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court on September 31, 2019 have accepted and admitted Facebook's appeal against the order passed in the case of Swami Ramdev & Anr v. Facebook Inc. & Ors. To this effect the Delhi High Court has clarified that there shall be no interim stay to be granted on the former order (global injunction) and at the same time the respondents, i.e. Swami Ramdev, have confirmed that no contempt application / proceeding prior to the disposal of the current appeal will be initiated by them.

The matter in question, i.e. the appeal, is set for its next hearing on December 07, 2019. The respective parties have been directed to file their written arguments one week before the next hearing date in expectation that the arguments would be concluded on the date of the next hearing.

The former order (Read here)was passed by the Hon'ble Delhi High Court, which held that as long as either the uploading of the content in question is uploaded from India or whether the information that is uploaded is located in India on a computer resource, then the Indian Courts are to have international jurisdiction to pass worldwide injunctions.

In a gist, any information which is uploaded from India to a computer resource which led to the information to exist on the network and global dissemination of the same occurs, then the platforms would be liable to remove the information or disable the access to the said information. Such removal or disabling cannot be restricted to a geographical extent.

The awaited order in the current appeal pending before the Hon'ble Delhi High Court will likely change the landscape of national laws governing the online environment as well as may have far reaching consequences for extraterritorial orders passed internationally.

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