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9. The role of Mr. Adebare is slightly different since he is stated to be a Nigerian national without any authorization or license to practice law in India. The plaint avers and emphasized that all the defendants were in full time employment of the plaintiff and the billing to the clients was in the name of the plaintiff. The defendants were paid performance linked remuneration and were under the discipline and regime of the plaintiff which inter alia included maintaining daily time sheets and adhering to the disciplines of the plaintiff's law firm. There is stated to be no separate clientele of the defendants and the defendants provided professional services only to the plaintiff and never independently represented any client of the plaintiff. The assignment of the work is stated to have been done by the plaintiff at his sole discretion and the productivity of the defendants was determined by actual number of billable hours they had worked on a particular matter for a client of the plaintiff. The plaintiff claims that under his guidance, direction, supervision and control defendants and other associates using the plaintiff's knowledge, skill, experience, resources and investment, developed and created various extremely confidential, crucial and vital electronic records, documents, data and information utilizing the computer system at the office of the plaintiff. Such record is stated to comprise of various proprietary drafts of precedents, agreements, forms, presentation, petitions, confidential documents, legal opinions, legal action plans, computerized database containing client information, proprietary client list, proprietary potential client list and other related information. The termination of relationship between the parties occurred in March 2004 except for Mr. Naqvi who left in November 2003. These defendants then set up their own law firm with which the plaintiff does not and cannot have any grievance. The grievance arises from what is alleged to be an infringement of copyright the details of which have been given hereinabove. Just a couple of days before leaving the plaintiff, the defendant No. 1 is stated to have visited the office of the plaintiff after office hours and requested the security guard to allow him to enter the office on the pretext of downloading some information from the computer for a project handled by him. The guard had no reason not to permit defendant No. 1 to enter the plaintiff's office, who brought a CD-Writer with him and connected the same to the computer in the plaintiff's office, which was inter connected with the plaintiff's Local Area Network (LAN) with Windows Server having 7.2 GB of data. Thus, all the confidential information was copied using the CD-Writer. Not only that defendant No. 1 is stated to have stolen the hard copy Page 1882 precedents comprising over 10 proprietary drafts of the plaintiff. Defendant No. 1 is also stated to have E-mailed the same by using the Internet access installed on the computer of the plaintiff being utilized by defendant No. 1, being the original literary works of the plaintiff to himself and to other persons including the other three defendants. Defendant No. 1 is stated to have taken away with him licensed CDs of all foreign judgments, precedents, conveyances and forms that were actually licensed in the name of the plaintiff and further is alleged to have stolen over 3,000 visiting cards belonging to the plaintiff's law firms given by different clients and contact persons. The aforesaid action of defendant No. 1 resulted in criminal complaints on account of the failure of defendant No. 1 to agree to the plaintiff's request to refrain from using the material. The police raided the residence-cum-office of defendant No. 1 in September 2004 and found four computers. The hard disk of all the four computers was, thus, taken by the Delhi Police and after making two copies of the same, one copy was given back to the defendants and the other copy was taken by the police for investigation purposes. The defendants are stated to have admitted in their possession all the documents of the plaintiff's law firm in the proceedings filed before the High Court by the defendants but the claim of the defendants is that the same was prepared by them. This admission is made and recorded in the order dated 14.9.2004 in Criminal Misc. No. 2264/2004 which is relied upon by the plaintiff to show that the defendants are in possession of the material of the plaintiff.

25. learned Counsel also referred to the treaty of P. Narayan on Copyright and Industrial Designs (third edition) wherein para 6.28 deals with employees in solicitor firm and observed as under:

6.28 Employee in solicitor's firm ' legal draft Whenever an employee of a solicitor's firm drafts a document (an agreement, sale deed etc.) in the course of his employment the employer is the first owner of the copyright in that document.

26. learned Counsel has laid emphasis on the principles laid down by the Court of Appeal in Robb v. Green 1895 2 QB 1, where it was held that it was an implied term of contract of service that the defendant would not use to the detriment of the plaintiff, information to which he had access in the course of service. It was observed on page 17 as under:

76. Interestingly in the commentary by an Indian author of P. Narayanan on Copyright and Industrial Designs there is a paragraph devoted to an employee in a solicitor firm where it is emphasized that where an employee in a solicitor's firm drafts a document or an agreement or sale deed it is the employer who is the first owner of copyright in that document. Here again it has to be emphasized that while referring to an employee, the reference naturally is to a lawyer and to the relationship which may exist between two lawyers where one lawyer works for the other.