SMS hearing on Saturday

The Madras High Court has posted for Saturday a batch of petitions filed by mobile cell phone providers, seeking to vacate the February 7 Court order, restraining the providers from giving any SMS pertaining to the ongoing one-day series between India and Pakistan.

When the 'vacate petition', filed by Bharti Televentures, Hutchinson, Aircell and other cellphone providers came up before the Court, Justice R Banumathi posted it for hearing on Friday after some advocates said they were unable to attend the Court due to a strike call on Friday by the Madras High Court Advocate Association.

The second one-dayer will be played at Rawalpindi on Saturday.

On February 7, Justice M Chockalingam had given an interim order on the SMS on a civil suit filed by M/S Marksman Marketing Services Pvt. Ltd.

The petitioner submitted that during the recently concluded India-Pak Test series, it was noticed that cellular phone operators were disseminating information related to scores and updates through SMS to their subscribers, allegedly without obtaining permission from Vectracom.

The applicant apprehended that cellular phone companies across India would also provide information on scores and updates of the ODI series too, without obtaining permission.

The defendants mentioned in the suit were - Bharti Televentures Ltd, BSNL, Reliance Infocom Ltd, Hutchison Essar Ltd, IDEA Cellular Registered Office, Aircell Cellular Ltd, Aircell Ltd, Spice Telecom, Tata Indicom, Sify Ltd, Rediff.com India Ltd, Yahoo Webservices Ltd, India Times, IMI Mobile, Phony Tunes.com, Pyro Mobile Pvt Ltd, ON Mobile Asia-Pacific Pvt Ltd, CricInfo India, BCCI and TRAI.