New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has asked social media platform LinkedIn to provide information regarding its grievance officers and the process they follow when receiving complaints under the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules.
A bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh further instructed LinkedIn to submit the regulations applicable to individuals who create profiles on its portal.
The court also directed LinkedIn to make the physical and email addresses of its grievance officers publicly accessible on its website.
The court’s order came on a response to a legal case filed by Tata Sky Ltd against LinkedIn and other entities.
Tata Sky, a prominent Direct-To-Home (DTH) and Pay TV platform in India, underwent a rebranding last year and adopted the name Tata Play to reflect its expanded business endeavours. It claimed that several people had falsely represented themselves as employees of the company by creating profiles on LinkedIn.
Tata Sky also filed a lawsuit against 37 individuals who, despite not being authorised retail sellers of its product, were accused of falsely presenting themselves as retailers of Tata Sky on their LinkedIn profiles.
In the recent order, the court stated: “Defendant No. 1 LinkedIn is required to provide the details of its Grievance Officers and the Rules that apply to individuals creating LinkedIn profiles, as per LinkedIn’s own policy. Additionally, LinkedIn is instructed to submit the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), if any, followed by the Grievance Officers when addressing complaints received under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.”
“If the Plaintiff has any outstanding issue or suggestions in respect of manner in which the grievances are addressed by the Defendant No 1 (Linkedin), the Plaintiff may also place its own note on record. In addition, it is made clear that the details of the Grievance Officers in terms of 2021 Rules including the physical and email address shall be published openly for the public access on the website of Linkedin,” the court ordered on July 7.
