Highlights
- The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal has stayed the five-year ban on sharing WhatsApp user data with other Meta Companies for advertising purposes.
- The Appellate Tribunal upheld the Competition Commission of India’s directive requiring WhatsApp to provide detailed explanations regarding the purpose of user data sharing.
- The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal ordered Meta to deposit 50% of the imposed penalty while emphasizing the need for early resolution of the case regarding WhatsApp’s 2021 Privacy Policy.
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) stayed the ban imposed for five years on the sharing of WhatsApp data collected with other Meta Companies or Meta Company Products for advertising purposes.
“We are the prime decide to view that ban of five years imposed in paragraph 247.1 needs to be stayed,” said NCLAT while pronouncing the order on January 23.
The Appellate tribunal declined to put a stay on the CCI order directing WhatsApp to include a detailed explanation of the user data shared with other Meta Companies or Meta Company Products specifying the purpose of data sharing, linking each type of data to its purpose of sharing, Sharing of user data with other Meta Companies not to be a condition for users to access WhatsApp Service in India, and providing the choice to manage, review and modify their data sharing permissions.
The Appellate tribunal declined to set aside the compliance period of three months for the aforesaid directions, with a filing of the compliance report before the commission.”We however are of the view that directions issued by the CCI under paragraphs 247.2 and 247.3 need not be stayed and they need to be complied with,” Justice Ashok Bhushan, (Chairperson) and Arun Baroka, Member (Technical) said while pronouncing the order.
The bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan, (Chairperson) and Arun Baroka, Member (Technical) directed Meta to deposit 50% of the penalty, after taking into consideration 25% already deposited.
“Both the parties are granted leave to pray for modification of this order and even Digital Personal Data Protection Act is enforced or any other statutory provisions are enforced regarding the data protection and sharing of the data,” said NCLAT.
NCLAT stressed the need to decide the case at an early date, considering the nature of the issues raised in the appeal. “We grant leave to the parties to complete the necessary reading within six weeks from today. Let’s list both the appeals for the hearing on 17th March 25th at 2 pm,” NCLAT while listing the matter for hearing on March 25.
The matter was related to the implementation of WhatsApp’s 2021 Privacy Policy, and the sharing of the data collected with other Meta companies.
On November 18, CCI imposed a monetary penalty of ₹ 213.14 crore on Meta for anti-competitive practices concerning the 2021 Privacy Policy Update.
The competition regulator directed that the text-messaging application, WhatsApp will not share user data collected with other Meta Companies or Meta Company Products for advertising purposes for five years.
The matter NCLAT admitted the matter, after hearing the preliminary submission from both parties on January 16.
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