Skunks are funny animals, they want brevity despite of their long tails. For the case of Erastus, details is very important and is a ideal case  study to put in our long list of Lessons Learnt. 

By the way, by posting this Erastus is violating NDA..

regards 

On 11 February 2015 at 10:03, Ndungi Kyalo <ndungi@gmail.com> wrote:

I was hoping this one would attract a lot of contributions I could glean from too. Especially from those with a legal background. Is the loud silence because discussing the matter might be sub-judice ?

--
Ndungi Kyalo

On 11 February 2015 at 09:09, Isaac Kiplagat via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

Hi Erastus,

Contract was terminated by CeVen prematurely. No clause in the contract that stipulates the pre-termination of the contract, you can request for compensation of your total projected income to 2019.

I also believe that the contract can be interpreted as "Joint Venture". CeVen did not subcontract you to develop software but to fill in a business gap. The challenge in this contract is the use of the word "software". Skunks, If you want to reduce the risk of such incidents use word like; Solution or applications in place of software. Software can easily be concluded to mean the product including the source code. Applications or solutions means whatever technology you use, as long as results is achieved.

You can create a business model and apply function point analysis to evaluate the cost of source code, then you re-value the software and 'do out of the court' settlement. 

"If you can create it,you can destroy it". Anonymous :)

Regards,

Isaac Kiplagat

Regards,

Isaac

On Feb 11, 2015 12:35 AM, "gisho via skunkworks" <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

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.

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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--

Isaac Kiplagat. KIP®

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