Delhi High Court passed an injunction order (IA no. 9733/2005) against Bixee.com from deep linking, copying, downloading and reproducing the contents of naukri.com. Bixee.com is basically a jobs search engine, which provides the facility to search through different jobs available on the net. Bixee.com uses a web-crawling robot and bot technology called Bixeebot, which crawls through all the job sites on the net and provided the results in the Bixee.com search results with direct links to jobs, i.e. technology similar to what Search engines like google, msn, etc use.

Naukri.com contention was that they earn huge revenues through their website and the Bixee.com  website allows the users to view the jobs directly they wish to view. In the process they completely bypass the HomePage of the website. This process resulted in financial loss to the company with the fall in advertising revenue.

It was also contended by the Plaintiff that the defendant was copying the entire database of Naukri.com by the use of Robots through Deep-Linking, whereas Naukri.com's policy prohibited deep linking into the website without its consent. As a result Delhi High Court restrained Bixee.com from Deep Linking, copying, downloading and reproducing contents from the plaintiff's website. Though the final verdict will be interesting, as the following is the legal position in different countries.

Position under US Law:

Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.Com, Inc., No. 99-07654 (CD Calif. Mar. 27, 2000). In this case Tickets.com provided deep linking into pages of the Ticketmasters.com website, assisting people in their ability to acquire tickets. Ticketmaster.com would have preferred that people come through their Home Page, and not directly to some inner sub-page, so they sued Tickets.com. But Tickets.com provided only a hyperlink and there was a full disclosure that users were going to a third party website and would no longer be on tickets.com. Thus there was no confusion about whose services were being used. The Court concluded in this situation that deep linking in and of itself did not constitute copyright infringement.

Ticketmaster was also involved in a similar dispute with Microsoft. When efforts to come to an arrangement on linking failed, Microsoft's Sidewalk went ahead and deep linked to Ticketmaster.com anyway. Ticketmaster sued. The case was resolved by settlement with the apparent agreement that Microsoft would from now on desist the deep linking and link only to Ticketmaster's homepage.

Position in Germany:

Bundesgerichtshof, the highest court in Germany in 2003 said "Deep linking is not illegal". Newspaper company Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt had sued the news search engine Paperboy for deep linking to their articles. According to the Bundesgerichtshof, the public interest in a well-working Internet takes precedence over the commercial interests of the newspaper company, even if the advertising of the company is bypassed. The Bundesgerichtshof has clarified that users can access any page if they know the URL, and deep linking is just a technical simplification for entering the URL manually.

I agree with German Decision's reasoning. And not to forget Google News service, it also does Deep-Linking into every News Website over the Internet. Let's see what Indian Court decide but in no case a company can Deep Link in to other's website, where there exists a policy against it. So it is better to go through the website's Polcies and Disclaimers before you deep link in to it or request permission from the website owner.