The court emphasized that parties may only request documents directly relevant to their case, while discovery cannot be based merely on allegations of relevance without supporting evidence.

JUDGMENT

Navin Chawla, J.

I.A. 2473/2019

1. This is an application filed by the defendant no.2/applicant under Order XI Rules 3 and 5 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (in short, `CPC'), as applicable to commercial disputes, praying for the production of the following documents by the plaintiff/non-applicant:

"a. License Agreements entered into by the Plaintiff with various parties in the same trade as Defendant No.2 more particularly HTC, LG, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, ZTE, CoolPad etc

b. 100 global license agreements entered into by the Plaintiff in relation to its portfolio of alleged Standard Essential Patents from most recent to the date of filing the Suit; and

c. Declarations of Essentiality made by the Plaintiff to ETSI in respect of the eight suit patents.

d. All licensing agreements the Plaintiff has entered into with entities in India with respect to the suit patents and all statements of working filed by Plaintiff under section 146 of the Patents Act with respect to the suit patents.

e. Complete agreements between Plaintiff and Qualcomm and all documents relating to any offers made, negotiations held or agreements entered into any time by and between the Plaintiff and manufacturers of Radio Frequency Baseband Processors ("chipsets") anywhere in the world more particularly with respect to Qualcomm and MediaTek. All documents related to any offers made, negotiations held or agreements entered into at any time by and between Plaintiff and component manufacturers (as distinguished from end product manufacturers) anywhere in the world.

f. Agreements entered into between telecom network service providers and Plaintiff under which equipment as supplied to government and private operators."

Submissions on behalf of the defendant

2. In support of the application, the learned counsel for the defendant no.2/applicant has drawn my attention to the contents of paragraph 18 of the plaint, wherein the plaintiff/non-applicant asserts that it supports Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (in short, `FRAND') licensing and has over 100 Global License Agreements with vendors in the telecom industry. The defendants had earlier filed an I.A. No. 11833 of 2016 under Order XI Rules 3 and 5 of the CPC seeking production of similar documents, whereafter, owing to the confidential nature of the documents the Confidentiality Club was created. The learned counsel for the defendant no.2/applicant submits that the plaintiff/non-applicant has produced only seventy Global Patent License Agreements, in a sealed cover, pursuant to the Confidentiality Club created vide the order of this Court dated 04.04.2018. Of these, only five License Agreements pertain to Indian entities. He submits that the plaintiff/non-applicant has effectively filed only thirty-seven License Agreements with different entities, both Indian and Global, and, the remaining thirty-three agreements are either amendments or executed with the same entities on different dates; thirty-six of the License Agreements as produced by the plaintiff/non-applicant are not even valid and subsisting as on date and no renewed or latest License Agreements have been produced by the plaintiff/non-applicant to prove their validity; some of the License Agreements do not even pertain to the companies which are in the same business or trade as that of the defendant no.2. He submits that the plaintiff/non-applicant, therefore, ha