Ride-hailing company Ola of Bhavish Aggarwal is under fire from MapMyIndia, which has accused the former of data theft. The allegation has led to a legal notice being served to Ola.
What Happened: MapMyIndia’s parent company, CE Info Systems, has alleged that Ola violated the licence agreement they signed in 2021, reported Forbes India. The company claims that Ola developed its own maps by caching and saving MapMyIndia’s data and then co-mingling and reverse-engineering the licensed product.
The legal notice served to Ola Electric asserts that Ola duplicated MapMyIndia’s API (application programming interface) and SDKs (software development kits) from proprietary sources to create Ola Maps. The notice also states that Ola’s claim of developing API and map data solely through open maps is factually incorrect.
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In June 2021, Ola Electric signed an agreement with CE Info Systems to use its data. The agreement explicitly prohibited co-mingling and reverse engineering under Intellectual Property laws. However, the legal notice alleges that Ola has infringed the copyright vested in MapMyIndia pertaining to the source code.
Ola Maps was launched in early July, after Ola’s exit from Google Maps. Netizens had pointed out that Ola Maps had a strong similarity to Openstreet maps.
The legal notice comes at a time when Ola Electric is in the midst of its ₹6,100-crore IPO.
Why It Matters: This legal tussle comes at a crucial time for Ola, which is in the middle of its ₹6,100-crore IPO. The allegations of data theft could potentially impact investor sentiment and the overall success of the IPO. Furthermore, this incident raises broader questions about data security and intellectual property rights in the tech industry. If Ola is found guilty of the alleged data theft, it could set a precedent for future cases and potentially lead to stricter regulations in the industry.
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