The Patna High Court has quashed a criminal case lodged against Prashant Kishor over allegations that he stole data and campaign material for his “Baat Bihar Ki” political campaign ahead of the Bihar Assembly elections.

Justice Sandeep Kumar held that even if the allegations in the FIR were accepted at face value, no offences of forgery, cheating, criminal breach of trust or conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code were made out.

The Court made a significant observation on intellectual property and political campaign concepts, stating that “there can be no copyright in an idea, subject matter or themes,” and that the complainant could not invoke criminal law merely by using the phrase “intellectual property.”

The FIR was registered in 2020 at Patliputra Police Station on the complaint of Shashwat Gautam, who claimed that he had conceptualised a data-driven political campaign titled “Bihar Ki Baat.” According to the complaint, the campaign included socio-economic data analysis, concept notes, campaign designs, workflow models and algorithms related to Bihar politics.

Gautam alleged that one Osama Khurshid, who was associated with the campaign, left the organisation with a laptop containing confidential campaign material. He further claimed that Kishor later launched the “Baat Bihar Ki” campaign using similar material and registered the website “www.baatbiharki.in”.

Based on these allegations, offences under Sections 467, 468, 471, 420, 406 and 120B of the IPC were invoked against Kishor.

Appearing for Kishor, counsel argued that the dispute was civil in nature and had been wrongly converted into a criminal case. It was also argued that there was no allegation that Kishor himself stole the laptop or created any forged document.

Accepting these submissions, the High Court held that forgery offences require the making of a false document, which was completely absent in the present case. The Court also ruled that the ingredients of cheating under Section 420 IPC were not satisfied since there was no allegation that Kishor induced the complainant to part with any property through deception.

“At its highest, the petitioner is alleged only to have used, at a later stage, the data said to have originated with the informant,” the Court observed.

The Court further noted that the alleged campaign materials and data were not shown to be protected under any recognised intellectual property law, including the Copyright Act. It added that ideas, themes and concepts based on publicly available sources such as census reports and economic surveys cannot ordinarily claim exclusive copyright protection.

The High Court also took note of the fact that the complainant had already filed a civil suit relating to the same dispute. It held that continuation of the criminal proceedings would amount to an abuse of the process of law and accordingly quashed the FIR against Kishor.