WhiteHat Jr withdraws defamation against Pradeep Poonia before Delhi High Court

WhiteHat Jr has withdrawn its defamation suit filed before the Delhi High Court against Pradeep Poonia (Karan Bajaj & Anr vs Pradeep Poonia).

WhiteHat Jr through its founder Karan Bajaj, had moved the High Court last year, alleging that Poonia was making defamatory and baseless comments against the kids coding platform, with the objective of bringing their business down.

It was alleged that Poonia was making comments on the number or quality of teachers at WhiteHat Jr and even ran a dedicated Telegram channel "to attack" the platform.

The suit also alleged mischief and invasion of privacy as well as trademark infringement, passing off and dilution of the WhiteHat Jr trademarks, copyright etc.

In defence, Poonia argued that none of his comments and videos amounted to defamation and were not malicious. It was submitted that Poonia was not carrying on any commercial activity by using the trademark ‘Whitehat Sr’ or the similar trademark for the purposes of business or profit making.

In November last year, the Court had passed an interim order in favour of WhiteHat Jr as it directed Poonia to take down certain defamatory content.

In the interim order, the Court inter alia restrained Poonia from unauthorizedly accessing or hacking into the internal communication platform of WhiteHat Jr and displaying it to the world at large.

Poonia himself undertook not to share or telecast any of the copyrighted material of WhiteHat Jr in the meantime.