Court Slams Zo Rooms over Data Theft & Acquiring Accusations on OYO Rooms

In a long standing legal war of accusations over data theft between online hotel aggregators OYO Rooms and Zostel Hospitality for Zo Rooms where the former has been defending itself from latter’s accusations, court puts an end to the tiff. According to the recent legal development, the court has declined Zo Rooms’ petition against OYO Rooms. In an officially released statement OYO management has mentioned that, “Zostel filed a frivolous arbitration petition in District Court, Gurugram earlier on Feb 2, 2018, as a counterblast to OYO’s rightful legal case. Important to note an important development, this arbitration petition filed by Zostel against OYO has been rejected for want of jurisdiction with the Court as per order pronounced by the Court on Friday, Feb 23rd.”

“We are delighted with the outcome which reinforces the faith entrepreneurs have in the judiciary. Zostel is taking an emotional route now after the dismissal of their petition,” added OYO.

The statement also included that, “These are factual misrepresentations and theatrical antics by Zostel in a futile attempt at gaining emotional mileage on the case. They are continuing their efforts to pressurize OYO to pay for an unviable business that Zostel shut down on its own in the absence of resources to further carry on its loss making operations. The non binding agreement fell apart earlier and we stated in a statement that there was no real business to acquire. In addition Zostel was not meeting its obligations to clear significant dues from vendors and owners to move the diligence forward. Getting into a deal with this background would have been harmful for our reputation and our business.”

All through this tiff, the accusations of OYO acquiring Zo Rooms were also doing rounds but OYO has decided against this and is not acquiring Zo Rooms as confirmed by the OYO Management.

"OYO also continues to pursue its criminal cases under section 379, 414, 420 and 120B of IPC filed in January 2018 and other implications under IT and Copyright Acts with the Economic Offences Wing & Cybercrime department, filed in 2015, against senior employees of Zostel for stealing data and other assets including laptops which continue to be under Zostel's access even now and being used to its benefit. We have full faith in the courts of law and believe that it will take the right decision and justice will be delivered," added OYO.