Spicy IP has published a legal notice it received from the legal representatives of Times Publishing House Limited*, threatening to sue its blogger Aparajita Lath, a law student at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), regarding a post she wrote on February 12th 2013, which mostly summarized developments related to the dispute between Financial Times Ltd and the Times of India Group* over the "Financial Times" trademark. If you read Lath's post (here), you'll notice that it's almost entirely referencing external articles, but also points towards the costs incurred and the time taken (19 years) as a result of this legal battle, concluding that this sets a bad precedent for foreign media companies wanting to enter India; a statement which Times' legal representatives call "false, incorrect, defamatory and in fact contrary to the facts of the case." More in the notice here, which asks for an unconditional apology in writing, the "publishing of true and correct facts on your website", and the removal of the article, failing which they shall initiate civil and criminal proceedings. From a digital reportage (and blogging perspective), what is particularly worrying is the assertion (in the legal notice) that liability transfers to someone drawing inferences from reportage. The legal notice states: "The impugned article, which refers to certain news articles published in the newspaper "The Mint" on various dates, which articles are also per-se incorrect, false, and defamatory. Consequently, any reporting based on the said Mint article would inevitably be an incorrect and defamatory…
