A local firm, Westchase Consultancy, has taken the Women’s University in Africa (WUA) to the High Court seeking to recover over $418 000 for allegedly illegally acquiring the firm’s source code from Microsoft without its consent.
BY CHARLES LAITON
The consultancy firm filed summons at the High Court in October last year and the matter is set to be heard this week.
According to Westchase, sometime in November 2009, it entered into an implementation agreement with the university, where it provided the institution with the enterprise wide university management software.
At the time of signing the agreement, WUA was reportedly represented by its vice-chancellor, Hope Sadza.
Westchase also claims, the parties further entered into a university management system support and maintenance agreement, where the consultancy firm was to provide maintenance and support services to WUA for $5 000 per quarter.
However, the firm said, despite the termination of the service and maintenance agreement, in terms of clause 11.5 of the agreement, WUA still had an obligation to pay 13% of the licence amount of the annual maintenance and upgrade fees, which was to be paid in each anniversary month of the signing of the contract annually.
“The defendant (WUA) has an outstanding balance of $9 348,42 being the royalty fees for 2014 and $9 348,42 being the royalty fees for 2015. Since the defendant is still using the plaintiff’s (Westchase) software, the outstanding royalty fees amount to $18 696, 84,” the firm said in its declaration.
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“The defendant illegally acquired the plaintiff’s source code of its software from Microsoft without consent from the plaintiff. The plaintiff has, thus, suffered damages of $400 000 as a result of plaintiff illegally acquiring its software.
“Despite demand, the defendant has failed, refused and neglected to pay the plaintiff $418 696 being the total outstanding royalties for 2014 and 2015 and damages suffered as a result of breach of contract.”
In response to the claim, the university denied it had an obligation to pay the 13% of the licence amount, while also dismissing it was liable to pay any royalty fees or any other similar fees.
“Defendant denies that it illegally acquired access to plaintiff’s intellectual property rights by illegally obtaining the source code to plaintiff’s software. Defendant challenges both liability to pay any amount to plaintiff and the quantum of damages being claimed,” WUA said in its plea.
