David Craig QC, instructed by Mishcon de Reya, obtained a final injunction on behalf of Tata Consultancy Services, one of the world’s leading IT businesses, against an individual who had managed to obtain, from an employee of Tata, details about a large number of Tata’s employees and clients taken from its internal database. The Defendant sought to use the information to obtain money from Tata on the back of an allegation that Tata was employing migrant workers illegally. The High Court rejected the argument that Tata was acting unlawfully, held that the information was sufficiently confidential to amount to a trade secret and that the Defendant knew that Tata had a reasonable expectation of confidentiality in respect of it. The Court also rejected the Defendant’s public interest defences, including that he wanted the information in order to report unlawful conduct to the relevant authorities. The High Court, inter alia, ordered the Defendant to deliver up hard copies and soft copies of the information, even if that information was held on devices that he owned. The case builds on the jurisprudence of the Court of Appeal in Imerman v Tchenguiz and Environment Agency v Rowan (in which the Court had held that there was no power to order delivery up of soft copies owned by a defendant pursuant to the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977).
