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Westland Ltd, the publishing house of Tata group, has dragged ecommerce marketplace Flipkart to Delhi Hight Court for alleged violation of copyrights and IT Act for selling Amish Tripathi’s `Scion of Ikshvaku’.
According to Westland, they had signed a two months deal with the US-based ecommerce company, Amazon to sell the book exclusively through its platform.
However, Flipkart has denied such violations and has said that Flipkart being a marketplace, helps sellers connect with customers across the country, which is no way violating the rights.
The matter was anticipated three days ago in the court, which declined to pass any restraint order against Flipkart or any of the sellers on the sale of the said book.
Tripathi is one of the best-selling Indian author who has gained international fame and acclamation for his Shiva trilogy comprising of The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras. Scion of Ikshvaku is the first book in `Ram Chandra series’ from the author.
Westland’s lawyer claimed that selling the book on Flipkart is in violation of copyright and the IT Act. “You cannot sell it and if any distributor is selling it through Flipkart, they are violating my copyrights,” he said.
Previously, the two had a similar spat over Chetan Bhagat’s novel `Half rights be Girlfriend’, for which Flipkart had an exclusive deal with publisher Rupa and on the other side, publisher had objected Amazon from selling the book on its platform.
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