The parent company of MapMyIndia, CE Info Systems, has now sent a legal notice to Ola Electric, alleging that it has copied data without consent. This follows Ola Electric having recently rolled out its own mapping service, Ola Maps, designed to compete with Google Maps in India.
PC: Moneycontrol
According to the legal notice, MapMyIndia has accused Ola Electric of flouting the clauses in the licensing agreement. In 2022, Ola Electric had used navigation services from MapMyIndia on its S1 Pro electric scooter. Indeed, the agreement had strictly banned Ola from co-mingling the licensed product with any competing product, performing reverse engineering, or attempting to extract or copy the source code from any API or other software relating to the licensed product.
MapMyIndia said Ola Maps cached and saved their data against the licensing agreement inked between the two in 2021. The Delhi-based firm caution of taking all appropriate civil and criminal legal action against Ola Electric. Until the time of going to press, none of the companies had issued an official statement.
Just at the onset of this month, Ola Electric launched Ola Maps, putting it at variance with its earlier dependence on Google Maps. Ola Electric CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said this change of an in-house mapping service is expected to save the company a whopping Rs 100 crore annually. In an apparent response to Ola Maps’ free offering, Google has cut by as much as 70% the pricing of usage of its Google Maps platform for the Indian developers. The company further said that developers working with Open Network for Digital Commerce will see a 90% discount in their charges.
MapMyIndia, listed in the stock exchange in December 2021, reported a 35% rise in net profit which came up to Rs 38.2 crore in the last quarter of the fiscal year 24. The operating revenue of the company in that period was Rs 106 crore.
Ola Electric, on the other hand, is also eyeing its listing in the stock market on August 2. It has been continuously in the news over its expansion plans, coupled with innovations in the electric vehicle segment.
The court case between MapMyIndia and Ola Electric, therefore, throws up quite a number of problems that such rapid changes bring to the tech world, with areas of contestation cutting across data usage and intellectual property. With these two being companies in the same industry and entangled in this court case, the implications of a decision could be huge for the broad industry on use and protection of digital mapping data.
In effect, the allegations by MapMyIndia against Ola Electric raise a very critical concern about licensing agreements and their infringement, resulting in legal implications. The outcome of the case will, therefore, be keenly watched by stakeholders in the industry and legal experts.
