ISLAMABAD, Mar 28 (Reuters): A legal battle between online marketplace OLX and Pakistan's largest automobile sales website over intellectual property theft and copyright infringement can help boost the confidence of big tech names to invest in the country.
OLX contends PakWheels has been stealing vehicle classifieds and user data from its website, and spamming OLX users. OLX's Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan regional head Bilal Bajwa hopes for a court ruling prohibiting such practices.
But even if the court does not rule directly in favour of OLX or PakWheels, industry executives hope it will provide some interpretations of Pakistan's relatively new laws on copyright, intellectual property and consumer protection to show how they should be applied in the future.
That will bring more clarity to the law, letting companies and consumers know what protections they can expect in the future, they said. "It's not going to open the floodgates of investment overnight, but it's going to become a benchmark other companies can use," Shehryar Hydri, the secretary general of Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), an IT trade body, said.
"It will definitely make other companies more comfortable."
Information technology is Pakistan's second-largest export behind textiles, worth $2.8 billion in the last fiscal year, according to the country's finance ministry and P@SHA. Industry experts forecast this will double over the next four years.
There are some 4,000 local tech startups employing more than 150,000 people in Pakistan, including billion dollar successes such as Careem, an online ride-hailing service, Afiniti, which uses artificial intelligence to pair callers with call centres, and emerging clean-energy solutions firm Skyelectric.
But big foreign firms have been slow to enter the market, in part because cyber laws are vague. "This case is about OLX fighting to protect the privacy of our users as well as our significant investment in marketing," Bajwa said.
PakWheels contends it did not steal any content from OLX. Its users can post an advertisement for free and they routinely copy-and-paste the same advertisements from one website to another, it says.
"Their primary argument is that PakWheels is using the OLX logo to further our brand, which is ridiculous because two competitors will never use each other's logo," PakWheels Chief Executive Raza Saeed said, adding that PakWheels is an established local brand.
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