The founder of popular blog ‘Humans of New York’ on Saturday chided ‘Humans of Bombay’ after the latter filed a copyright infringement suit against an Instagram handle called ‘People of India’.

Brandon Stanton, founder of Humans of New York, wrote on X, “I’ve stayed quiet on the appropriation of my work because I think Humans Of Bombay shares important stories, even if they’ve monetised far past anything I’d feel comfortable doing on HONY.”

“But you can’t be suing people for what I’ve forgiven you for,” he added.

Stanton had created the Humans of New York blog in 2010, while Humans of Bombay was started in 2014 by Karishma Mehta, an economics and business graduate from a British university.

The Delhi High Court on Monday issued notice to People of India (POI) after a plea was filed by Humans of Bombay (HOB), seeking to restrain it from appropriating the former’s “unique format of storytelling” and publishing the same to the public, reported The Indian Express. The matter will be heard on October 11.

HOB’s counsel Abhishek Malhotra said that the defendant has started an identical portal/service having identical content by the name of ‘People of India’, He said that the defendant has replicated images/videos from HOB’s platform and has used it on its own platform.

Among the various reliefs sought, the application seeks a direction to POI to take down all of HOB’s work which has been created by POI either directly or indirectly.

Meanwhile, responding to Stanton’s tweet, HOC said that he should have “equipped” himself with all the information about the case.

“As with the hundreds of Humans of chapters around the world, we love and understand the power of storytelling,” the post read.

“It’s therefore shocking that a cryptic assault on our efforts to project our intellectual property is made in this manner, especially without understanding the background of the case,” the statement read.

“Perhaps, before jumping the gun on this matter, you ought to have equipped yourself with the information about the case and also about what HOB is trying to achieve. HOB is all for the power of story telling. But it should be done honestly and ethically. We have sent you an email, requesting a conversation to provide further details,” HOB wrote on X.

“We believe in the honourable court of India and will request patience for law to take it’s own course after hearing ALL facts of the matter (sic),” it added.

In another post, HOB wrote that the suit was “related to the IP in our posts and not about storytelling at all”.

“We tried to address the issue amicably before approaching the Court, as we believe in protecting our team’s hard work,” it added.