Carter-Ruck has secured a “John Doe” injunction on behalf of two substantial companies to prevent a leak of confidential customer information. A John Doe injunction is an interim non-disclosure order made against “persons unknown – a useful tool for situations where the victim of a leak may either not know or only suspect the identity of the culprit but cannot be certain of proving the position due to a lack of evidence and/or journalistic protection of sources, in the short time available before applying for an injunction.

The importance of such an injunction is that, under the so-called Spycatcher principle, it still also restrains third parties who are put on notice of the injunction (in this case, the suspected source and newspapers who were also provided with (1) the application and (2) the resulting order) from publishing the relevant confidential information.


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