Court date set in Vodacom’s appeal case against ‘Please Call Me’ inventor 

Telecommunication giant Vodacom’s leave to appeal application in its legal battle against ‘Please Call Me’ inventor, Nkosana Makate will be heard next month.

Vodacom is seeking to appeal a recent court judgment that ruled in favoured of Makete.

Last month, the Pretoria High Court ruled that Makate was entitled to 5% of Vodacom’s revenue generated from his invention from March 2001 to March 2021.

The court also ruled that Makate is entitled to 27% of the revenue generated by the return of calls sent through the Please Call Me platform.

In her ruling, Judge Wendy Hughes ordered Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub to calculate and make a determination on how much is owed to Makate within one month.

Appeal

Following the court ruling, Vodacom immediately signalled its intentions to appeal.

The telecommunication giant’s leave to appeal application will be heard virtually in the Pretoria High Court on 1 April, Makete confirmed in a tweet on Saturday morning.

Vodacom, in its court papers filed on 25 February, stated that Judge Hughes erred in her ruling to give the company one month to “a fresh determination” to Makate, according to SowetanLIVE.

The company yet again has argued that its initial R47 million payout offer to Makete was fair.

“And the CEO’s determination was reasonable and, in any event, the amount of R47-million awarded to the applicant was not only generous, but had not been shown by Mr Makate to have resulted in any patent inequity,” Vodacom said.

‘Generated billions’

Makate first laid a claim in court in 2015 for millions of rands from Vodacom for the successful service that the company introduced in 2001, which allows cellphone users to send a free message to another user requesting that they be called back.

The Constitutional Court (ConCourt) in 2016 ordered Vodacom to pay their former accountant for coming up with the concept.

Protracted negotiations ensued between the two parties, but failed to reach a settlement.

The Please Call Me inventor rejected Vodacom’s offer of R47 million in 2019.

During an interview with eNCA in February, Makate refrained from commenting on how much money he is expected Vodacom to pay him.

“Let me not be drawn into any amounts… let’s allow the CEO [of Vodacom] to go do his calculations. We have always contended that we need a fair compensation in this matter based on accurate revenues.

“We have placed the facts of those revenues before court. I mean Vodacom is on record [because the company] in 2016 [or] 2015 said they have generated billions out of this,” he said at the time.

The Citizen previously reported that Makate indicated that he should be getting closer to R10 billion – plus interest.