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Judgment
The present Commercial Court Appeals have been filed challenging two orders dated 21.07.2026, passed by the Commercial Court at L.B. Nagar in two Interlocutory Applications (I.A.Nos.717 of 2026 and I.A.No.718 of 2026 in C.O.S.No.52 of 2026), filed by the respondent Nos.1 and 2/plaintiffs, which culminated in the impugned orders.
The appellants are the defendant Nos. 1, 2 and 9 in the Suit (C.O.S.No.52 of 2026) filed by the respondent Nos. 1 and 2/plaintiffs.
In the said Suit, the plaintiffs have sought for a wide range of reliefs, primarily permanent injunction restraining the defendants from using, reproducing, adapting, disclosing, commercialising, reverse engineering, decompiling, circulating, exploiting or claiming any right in the plaintiffs' proprietary platform. Context Graph Technology, SWARM/SOAC technical architecture, documentation, source code related material, Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), roadmaps, connector framework, resource plans, pricing models and confidential information. The plaintiffs have also sought for permanent injunction restraining the defendants from inducing, soliciting, employing, engaging or attempting to engage, or in any other manner causing, any employee, consultant or contractor of the plaintiffs' to leave the employment or engagement of the plaintiffs to join the defendants or any of their affiliates or associate companies, in violation of the Mutual Non-Disclosure and Confidentiality Agreement dated 30.07.2025.
The plaintiffs further claim damages of Rs.1.00 Crore on account of the defendants' unlawful inducement and procurement of breach of the employment, confidentiality, intellectual property and other allied contractual obligations binding on the plaintiffs' employees and for the consequential loss, injury, disruption of business, erosion of goodwill, and wrongful commercial exploitation of the plaintiffs' proprietary technology, trade secrets and confidential information caused thereby.
The respondent Nos.1 and 2/plaintiffs filed I.A.Nos.717 of 2026 and I.A.No.718 of 2026 in C.O.S.No.52 of 2026 seeking substantially the same reliefs as those claimed in the Suit, save and except that the reliefs sought were in the nature of temporary injunctions.
By the impugned orders dated 21.07.2026, the Commercial Court granted ex parte ad interim injunctions in favour of the respondent Nos.1 and 2/plaintiffs. The impugned orders are operative till 05.08.2026 i.e., tomorrow.
Learned counsel appearing for the appellants has placed the factual outline of the appellants' case before us.
We note that both the impugned orders dated 21.07.2026 suffer from the vice of being unreasoned. The Commercial Court has merely reproduced the prayers made in the I.As without indicating any grounds or reasons as to why the Commercial Court considered it necessary to grant ad interim ex parte injunctions in the plaintiffs' favour. However, since the impugned orders remain operative only till tomorrow, we do not consider it necessary to examine the two impugned orders or express any opinion thereof.
The only reason why we consider it necessary to engage with the matters is that the plaintiffs have filed a subsequent I.A under Order XXXIX Rule 2A of The Code Of Civil Procedure, 1908 ('CPC'), seeking an order from the Commercial Court holding certain respondents guilty of wilful disobedience of the orders dated 21.07.2026 passed by the Commercial Court and for detention of the said respondents in civil prison on that ground.
We accordingly deem it fit to dispose of the present Appeals by directing the Commercial Court to consider and dispose of I.A.Nos.717 and 718 of 2026 on merits, as expeditiously as possible preferably within an outer limit of 3 months, after affording an opportunity of hearing to all the parties. The Commercial Court shall not proceed with the subsequent I.A filed by the plaintiffs under Order XXXIX Rule 2A of the CPC alleging disobedience of the impugned orders dated 21.07.2026 until the Commercial Court hears and disposes of IA Nos.717 of 2026 and 718 of 2026. The Commercial Court shall not grant adjournments to any of the parties.
COMCA Nos.44 and 45 of 2026, along with all connected applications, are accordingly disposed of in terms of the above. There shall be no order as to costs.
It is made clear that we have not expressed any opinion on the merits of the Appeals, save and except for noting that the impugned orders do not disclose any reasons for granting the ex parte ad interim injunctions.