S. Ravindra Bhat, J.

1. The plaintiff seeks permanent injunction restraining the defendants, their successors, assigns, etc or anybody claiming through them, from publishing confidential and/or misleading information relating to the plaintiffs negotiations and contracts, in the form of articles or news items or in any other form, in the website www.indianpetro.com and its sister or other websites, or through e-mail alerts, without the written consent of the plaintiff; It also seeks mandatory injunction directing the defendants, their successors, assigns, etc. to unconditionally remove the confidential and misleading information/news items/articles detailed in paragraph 19 of the plaint from the defendants said website www.indianpetro.com.

.2. The Plaintiff is a listed, joint venture company promoted by four Public Sector Undertakings, (viz, GAIL (India) Limited, Oil Natural Gas Corporation Limited Indian Oil Corporation Limited and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited with an authorized share capital of Rs. 1200 crores, to import Liquefied Natural Gas (hereafter referred as "LNG") and set up LNG terminals in the country, Gaz De France, a French national gas company, through its investment subsidiary GDF International, holds a minority stake of 10% equity in the plaintiff as a strategic partner, Asian Development Bank holds 5.2% equity stake as an investor and 34.8% of the equity in the plaintiff is held by the general public.

3. The plaintiff is not aware of the exact legal status of defendant No. 1. The particulars of defendant No. 1 is based on the information provided in the website of defendant No. 1, www.indianpetro.com. Defendant No. 1 claims to be Indias largest news and informal market intelligence provider on Indian Oil and Gas, power and Fertilizer sectors. It also claims to have long standing relationships and networking arrangements to provide the most comprehensive, macro and micro reports of the respective industries. The defendant No. 1 owns and operates at least three websites, viz., www.indianpetro.com, www.energylineindia.com and www.indianfertilizer.com. Defendant No. 2 is the Executive Editor of defendant No. 1 and has registered the website www.indianpetro.com; the registration is for a period from 13.11.2001 to 13.11.2011.

4. The defendants have been publishing several news items/articles relating to the plaintiff in the suit website from time to time since 2003, and, barring a few items/articles published in June 2005, April and May 2006 they only published such information which was already in the public domain or which never affected its (the plaintiffs) interests in any manner. The plaintiff has no objection to the publication of news items or articles involving it, which are already in the public domain. It is, however, averred that unauthorized publishing of sensitive information shared between the plaintiff and international LNG sellers, present and/or prospective, or publishing of half-baked or misleading reports about the plaintiff or its commercial transactions, as it is bound to have serious repercussions on the plaintiff, cannot be permitted. This is in view of facts relating to the terms of LNG sale and purchase, particularly terms like price and quantity are negotiated separately for each transaction, if published have impact on potential agreements, which could lead to failure of negotiations. The adverse impact on publication could also be existing Sale and Purchase agreements getting breached/terminated (if there are disclosures about that agreement), the plaintiff facing claims for damages, and even on adverse impact on the plaintiff in the stock market. It is contended that any adverse impact on the plaintiffs transactions or potential transactions would have an adverse chain reaction on other stake -holders in the petroleum sector.

.5. It is alleged that the defendants, despite being aware of such adverse consequences, had published confidential information relating to the plai