[kictanet] Fwd: Software ownership dispute

[gisho]

Dear listers,

(Sorry for cross posting)


I have an ongoing case against me on regards to a software i developed for
a client called Ceven ltd on year 2013.

After I resigned from employment at March 2013, I stated doing my own
projects and thats when the then general manager of Ceven pointed out to me
that they were in need of a better and more efficient system for vending
prepaid electricity tokens.  Working at home, i worked for a month and a
half and presented my demo on April 2013. The demo was received well and
they gave me the go ahead to finalize the bits that were still rough. The
demo included interfaces for vendor management, virtual float management,
billing and a J2ME app for Nokia phones that would dispense a receipt via a
bluetooth printer.  On April 15th 2013 I installed the application to their
hardware for a live test. After a thorough test we decided to host the
server at Access Kenya data center at Baclys Plaza on mid May 2013 and
continued to push live transactions via the app.

I used a publicly available Ipay API that was then available here:
https://gforge.bizswitch.net/docman/view.php/9/34/Ipay-prepaidElecTransactionSpec.pdf
the API is no longer available form that site but can still be found by
just googling for it. The API enabled me to create a client to connect to
KPLC prepaid systems.
<https://gforge.bizswitch.net/docman/view.php/9/34/Ipay-prepaidElecTransactionSpec.pdf>

We discussed on payments that i was to take 20% of the net revenue share
less all technological related expenses which includes the hosting charges
for the server.

I got my first pay on September 2013 after settling all expenses that were
to be billed on me over that time.

All this time I was still upgrading the app to accommodate new requests
from the client and the vendors.

On June 2014, the client sent me the attached draft contract with a 2013
date and claimed that Ceven ltd owned my application.As at this time the
business had grown big and was known far and wide. The contract was
contrary to what i expected and I began to seek legal help and thats when I
registered a company and also obtained a copyright certificate from Kenya
Copyright Board. I did not sign the contract as I felt it was unfair on my
side.

On August 2014 I moved my application from the client's hardware to a cloud
server and then to my server on October 2014 which was co-located at the
same place - Access Kenya data center at Baclays plaza.

On October 2014 the client indicated that they were interested in acquiring
the application and we started negotiations for the same. We all agreed
that we were to find a party that would do a fair market valuation of the
software application independently. Attached was our draft MOU that would
see us through the process of this sale.

>From August 2014 the client started failing to pay the agreed amounts up to
November 2014 and whenever I would demand for payments they would urge me
to sign the contract. On start of December 2014, my lawyer went ahead and
wrote a negotiation agreement that required them to pay the arrears and
payment terms for the negotiation period which they never signed. At all
this time I would pay for the service expenses with my money and it was
inevitable that if the client did not pay for the service i would shutdown
the server.

On December 16th 2014, the client was issued a court order that barred me
from accesing my server or the clients server at Access Kenya either
physically or remotely. It also said that I should surrender administrative
passwords to them. They went ahead and shutdown my server where the
application was running and that was it... business closed! Later on the
faithful monit would send me emails of attempted power cycles on the
server. I still don't know what was happening at the server during those
times but thats a story for another day.


I was out of Nairobi on December 2014 and I came back on January 2015 when
I was served with the court order. I declined to give out any passwords as
that would get my software copied. Upon reading the court application
document, the client now says that they fully owns the software despite
them not providing any prove of ownership. They also claim that I acquired
my copyright certificate fraudulently. The software was running under brand
"Pata Pawa" which is owned by the client.

We are now in court and hearing is on February 11 2015 (which is today) at
High Court of Kenya Nairobi - Commercial and Admiralty Division.

In this case, who legally owns the software?

In case of any clarifications feel free to contact me.

If I win this case, I will release the code under GPL or MIT license. Maybe
someone will learn something from it. If I don't, I'll likely rot in Jail
for contempt of court which the judge said might be higher for me.


Regards,
Erastus
+254716165716
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