A Bangalore-based company on Friday claimed to have filed the first-ever case for damages by way of compensation under the Indian cyberlaw.

Antares Systems Ltd, operating in the electronic tendering product space, said it has filed the case against C1 India Private Ltd and four others under sections 43 and 46 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Antares filed the case for damages against C1 India, the New Delhi-based subsidiary of Nasdaq-listed Commerce1, alleging violation of copyright and intellectual property rights.

The company is seeking damages of Rs 25 lakh (Rs 2.5 million), along with interest at the rate of 24 per cent per annum.

Antares' senior vice-president R Kamath told a news conference in Bangalore that his company has also charged the respondents with, among others, developing their own e-tendering solution by copying the essential features of the company's product, Tenderwizard.

According to Kamath, the case, filed on behalf of the company by Supreme Court advocate Pavan Duggal, who specialises in cyberlaw, was pending before Prakash Kumar, adjudicating officer under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and special secretary (IT), Delhi government.

Antares claimed that the respondents collaborated with the company to jointly bid as a consortium for the e-procurement initiative of the Andhra Pradesh government.

However, C1, the lead bidder, executed the agreement with the Andhra government for the deployment of the project without the knowledge of Antares and completely cut the company out of the venture, he alleged.

The project, valued at about Rs 8 crore (Rs 80 million), consisted of an e-procurement component and an e-tendering component, he said, adding that Antares' speciality was its electronic tendering product Tenderwizard.

Kamath claimed that Antares shared the user ID and password of Tenderwizard with C1 for online evaluation but the latter, after the successful bid, 'dumped' Antares.

C1 had earlier asked for and got access to the user identification, password and navigation details of Tenderwizard from Antares and this information was used by C1 to 'reverse engineer' its own e-tendering software, Suresh Kumar alleged.

Antares also accused C1 of having downloaded and/or copied as also extracted data and information from its computer system or network.

Complaints to the Andhra government in this regard did not elicit any response, he said.

It said the case came up for hearing on July 9 and as the counsel for the respondents sought time, the adjudicating officer adjourned it to August 13.

Additional inputs: UNI