The Calcutta High Court has found a strong prima facie case of selective discrimination in a suit filed by IndiaMART InterMESH Limited against OpenAI Inc. and its affiliates, alleging unlawful exclusion of IndiaMART listings from results generated by ChatGPT.
Justice Ravi Krishan Kapur observed that prima facie “the petitioner is being selectively discriminated and justifiably excluded without anylogic.Inevitably, there is loss of goodwill, reputation and commercial injury which is being caused to the petitioner.”
The suit arises from IndiaMART’s grievance that its platform was deliberately excluded from ChatGPT’s services, allegedly based on adverse reviews by the United States Trade Representative (USTR), without prior notice or opportunity of hearing. IndiaMART contended that such reliance on USTR findings was arbitrary and non-binding, pointing to a Government of India press release clarifying that India is under no obligation to act on USTR reports. The petitioner also highlighted that other platforms named in the same USTR reviews continue to appear on ChatGPT.
Hearing the matter, the Court noted that the pleadings and correspondence prima facie indicate selective discrimination without any apparent logic or justification, resulting in loss of goodwill and reputation.
However, the Court declined to grant ad-interim relief at this stage, holding that any direction sought would effectively amount to granting final relief without hearing the respondents. Since the respondents remained unrepresented despite service, the Court directed fresh service and listed the matter for further hearing on January 13, 2026.
Appearances
Senior Advocates S.N. Mookherjee and Rudraman Bhattacharyya, along with Sourojit Dasgupta, S.K. Bajoria, Dhruv Chaddha, Gargi Vashistha, Siddhartha Banerjee and Akash Munshi, appeared for the petitioner
