Vodacom and Please Call Me idea-man Kenneth Makate will duke it out in yet another court battle after the Constitutional Court referred the ongoing matter back to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the apex court, the SCA made several errors in its latest judgment to award Makate billions in compensation, which has now been set aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Acting Deputy Chief Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga said the SCA failed to allow for a free trial and ordered that the matter go back to the court for a rerun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A differently constituted party of judges will now hear the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Makate and Vodacom have been fighting over the former’s Please Call Me idea for over two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Makate has been calling for fair compensation for “inventing” the Please Call Me service, which he believes should amount to almost R10 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vodacom has argued against this, saying that fair compensation for his contribution to the service would be around R50 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Makate has maintained that he originated the idea for a free missed-call service that would allow customers to get their contacts\u2019 attention without using airtime.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He shared the idea with his superior at Vodacom in 2001, where he said he was promised compensation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When this did not follow through, he launched a legal battle against Vodacom in 2008, seeking payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The matter escalated to the Constitutional Court, where it previously ordered Vodacom to pay Makate fairly for his idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the ruling, Vodacom increased its initial offer of compensation from R10 million to R47 million, which Makate rejected, returning to courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the second round of legal battles, the High Court ruled in Makate\u2019s favour for more compensation, which Vodacom rejected, taking Makate to the SCA.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Supreme Court dismissed Vodacom\u2019s appeal and then ordered the telco giant to compensate Makate between 5% and 7.5% of the revenue generated by the Please Call Me service over 18 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An analysis by MyBroadband revealed that this would have resulted in a payment anywhere between R29 billion and R55 billion, depending on which data was used to calculate the share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Makate later claimed he only wanted R9.7 billion for the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vodacom escalated the matter again to the Constitutional Court, arguing that the SCA had erred in its findings, unquestioningly using data submitted by Makate’s team to draw its conclusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While many had expected resolution to the matter in today’s ruling, the protracted legal battle will now continue with another round at the SCA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Constitutional Court has not ended the protracted legal battle between Vodacom and Please Call Me idea-man, Kenneth Makate, instead sending it back for another round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":751822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[6442,27],"class_list":["post-833653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-please-call-me","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833653"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":833667,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833653\/revisions\/833667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}