South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has ordered telecoms company Vodacom to pay its former employee Kenneth Nkosana Makate at least R29 billion for his ‘Please Call Me’ idea, MyBroadband news reported on Tuesday.
According to court records pulished by MyBroadband, the Supreme Court has in effect ordered Vodacom to pay 47-year-old Makate between R28.99 billion and R55.37 billion.
The exact wording of the Supreme Court ruling read: “The applicant is entitled to be paid 5%-7.5% of the total revenue of the [Please Call Me] product from March 2001 to date of judgment by the Second Respondent, together with the Mora Interest thereon, alternatively interest in terms of Section 2A(5) of the Prescribed Rate of Interest Act.”
Vodacom previously said it will challenge the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Constitutional Court.
Makate came up with the Please Call Me idea in 2000 when he was an employee at Vodacom – though there are claims that MTN beat him to it. The idea was to allow Vodacom users to send a free text message to other Vodacom users requesting a call back, which is particularly useful when airtime has run out.
Makate claimed he was entitled to a share of the revenue generated from his idea, which Vodacom eventually conceded. The amount of compensation and its duration became the basis of the dispute.
Makate’s legal team initially demanded R20 billion based on a share of revenue split and Vodacom countered with an offer of R10 million, based on what the company’s CEO would earn in 2001. However, Vodacom later upped that amount to R47 million.
Should Vodacom end up paying Makate his billions, it could result in anything from job cuts to price hikes at the mobile network operator.
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