Pretoria - The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, will this week deliver its judgment on whether Vodacom should be granted leave to appeal against the recent “Please Call Me” (PCM) inventor Nkosana Makate judgment, in which it was found he was short changed by the cellphone giant.
Vodacom turned to the court on Friday, where it set down a long list of objections against the judgment of Judge Wendy Hughes, in which she ordered Vodacom back to the drawing board to determine how much Makate is in fact owed for his invention.
The judge gave Vodacom some direction as to what to take into account when it made its new determination and gave Vodacom’s CEO Shameel Joosub two weeks to come up with a new amount.
Vodacom, however, filed papers in its bid for leave to appeal – either to the Supreme Court of Appeal or to a full bench (three judges) of this court.
This placed judge Hughes’s judgment on ice. But even if leave to appeal is denied this week, it can be a while before Makate may see what his invention is actually worth as Vodacom can then petition the SCA directly for leave to appeal.
In a 26-page document, Vodacom cited various reasons why it believed another court would come to a different finding than that of Judge Hughes.
The judge earlier made it clear in her judgment that the calculations used by Joosub in offering Makate R47 million, for what the judge called a brilliant invention, was by far too conservative.
Vodacom, on the other hand, said this offer was in fact “very generous”.
The company, in their application for leave to appeal, said it was common cause that the process which the CEO followed (to determine what Makate is owed) was fair. According to them, the CEO had gone so far as to grant the parties a hearing, which “he was not obliged, but had elected, to do.”
Advocate Cedric Puckrin SC, on behalf of Makate, said “Vodacom has adopted, with respect, referred to a ‘kitchen-sink’ approach”. He told the court Vodacom listed a host of criticisms against Judge Hughes’s judgment to create “enough dust to persuade the court to grant leave to appeal”.
Pretoria News