Vodacom Has Been Ordered To Pay ‘Please Call Me’ Inventor Nkosana Makate More Than R47 Million
Vodacom Has Been Ordered To Pay ‘Please Call Me’ Inventor Nkosana Makate More Than R47 Million. It has been reported that the Gauteng High Court has ordered South African Telecommunications giant Vodacom to pay ‘Please Call Me’ Inventor Nkosana Makate More than R47 million, which the company originally offered.
Makate and Vodacom have had a long standing court battle since the early 2000s, Makate is fighting to be fairly compensated for his invention and he believes that R47 million is not a fair amount to be compensated as he believes Vodacom earn billions of rands from the invention. Judge Wendy Hughes on Tuesday ruled that Vodacom’s CEO Shameel Joosub has one month in which he has to recalculate what is owed to Makate, using the guidelines laid down by the court.
According to Independent Online, the judge also said, “The CEO was disingenuous to project that PCM, as a third party service provider, should only be allocated a duration of five years. The facts demonstrate otherwise. In my view, it is therefore projectable that PCM as a brilliant concept would have had the longevity which it has today. Thus, the eighteen years proposed by Makate (over which time Vodacom has benefitted from PCM) is reasonable and probable.”
The judge shows that Vodacom did not consider the amount of years that they have been using Makate’s invention to calculate the money that was owed to him. Therefore the CEO of Vodacom has to follow a set of rules or guidelines set by the court in order to calculate the new amount that the company should pay to Makate.
This is a huge victory for Makate who has been battling the case for over two decades. He has shown that people need take their intellectual property seriously as people or organizations may take advantage of them by using it for free or not paying the full amount.
