Four entrepreneurs of a startup formerly incubated at Google-backed The Nest I/O have been arrested over charges of copyright infringement, according to local media reports.
The team was part of, The Investors Lounge, a portal for budding investors to see updated financial data on things like stocks, mutual funds, and commodities. It recently secured its first round of funding.
The four individuals – Baqar Abbas Jafri, Sennen D’Souza, Hammad Ali Hashmi, and Waqar Ehsan – were previously associated with The Nest I/O, a startup incubator based in Karachi which has received funding from Google for Entrepreneurs, Samsung, and the US State Department.
The case is an unprecedented one in Pakistan, where intellectual property rights are not regularly enforced.
The team has been accused of stealing firm’s source code to launch their own start-up in an incubation programme at The Nest I/O by its former employer, Mir Muhammad Ali Khan CEO of AMZ MAK Capital Ltd. While at AMZ MAK Capital, they had been given the task of building a social media platform for investors. Instead, they allegedly stole the source code and used it to build an alternative product with a few minor modifications.
“The mastermind behind this fraud, Baqar Abbas Jafri, re-launched the same website few months later, which was the idea and property of AMZ MAK Capital, by changing a few interfaces while keeping the exact same idea and the source code,” the CEO said.
He further added that he took to the courts to prevent the entrepreneurs from running away with the idea. The source code is valued at US$140,000.
However, the team behind Investors Lounge categorically denies the accusations. In a press statement, they said they “created new and original software code for the portal with the assistance of shared content recently purchased from recognised vendors with the specific intention of using such shared content for Investors Lounge only.”
As per media reports, Jehan Ara, Head of NEST I/O, said Investor’s Lounge was developed before her eyes when it was incubated at NEST. An FIR was thus lodged and a raid was conducted at Investor’s Lounge offices.