As many may already know, Safaricom, the largest mobile telecommunications company in Kenya is currently embroiled in a handful of intellectual property (read: copyright) law suits, with creators and innovators alike. See full list here. Recently, there have been some new developments in two of these cases, namely the M-Shwari and JB Maina cases.
To recap briefly, the M-shawri row arose late last year when Faulu Kenya claimed that it had pitched to Safaricom the idea of a mobile money service that allows users to save, borrow loans and earn interest using their mobile phones. On the other hand, the JB Maina case has been in court since 2010 when Safaricom was accused of copyright infringement in respect of musical works of JB Maina alleged to have been uploaded on Safaricom’s portals.
The Daily Nation now reports that the Court has declined to grant Faulu Kenya’s application for an interim injunction pending determination of its suit for breach of copyright and violation of trade secret. While this blogger is inclined to agree with this preliminary ruling by Justice Havelock, several concerns the learned judge’s reasoning on this case were raised.
Turning to the JB Maina case, a recent court ruling reported in full here has awarded limited Anton Piller orders to the plaintiff, JB Maina against Safaricom. The effect of these orders is that it allows JB Maina in the company of a copyright inspector to enter Safaricom’s premises, inspect its machines, take records, make copies of records for purposes of gathering and preserving evidence necessary to prove his claim. The court has also granted JB Maina a temporary injunction restraining Safaricom from dealing in JB Maina’s works, in addition to awarding JB Maina the costs of the motion to be paid by Safaricom.
This blogger will revisit this return of Anton Piller orders in Kenya’s IP litigation landscape in a subsequent post. However for the purposes of the JB Maina case, there are a couple of interesting questions that this blogger believes must be at the back of Safaricom’s mind. The first question is whether there is need to have such a complex web of relationships between the right holders (copyright owners); the music collecting societies (the copyright assignees); the content service providers and/or premium rate service providers (the middle men); and itself as a major user of copyright works. This first question requires Safaricom to think hard about eliminating the middle men altogether so as to deal directly either with the music collecting societies or the copyright owners themselves on an exclusive basis. The second question which flows from the first is whether the acts currently performed by Safaricom in respect to musical works and sound recordings ought to be licensed in the first place. This second question arises based on the various unlicensed rights currently being exploited by Safaricom, namely reproduction, communication to the public in addition to the performing right in the musical download.
At the very least, it is hoped that the final conclusion of both these Safaricom copyright suits may provide useful IP jurisprudence that will help settle some of the unanswered questions in Kenya.