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Court Sides with Safaricom in Reverse Call Copyright Dispute
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Kenyan Wall Street
March 17, 2025
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Why Court Sided With Safaricom in Reverse Call Copyright Case
Four years ago, Davidson Ivusa filed a legal suit against Safaricom claiming ownership of the Reverse Call feature, which allows a customer to make a call with or without airtime and the receiver pays on the caller’s behalf.
According to his court filings, Ivusa argued that Safaricom picked the idea from a proposal christened Jichomoe which he shared with them via email on 10th May 2010.
Safaricom launched the Reverse Call feature in June 2019, triggering the suit as Ivusa argued that it had not notified him and had delayed its implementation for nine years.
Last month, the High Court ruled that Ivusa's case lacked merit, siding with the telecommunications giant which argued that the feature was not unique, and that it had independently developed it in June 2018.
“There was no proof that Jichomoe had gained market recognition before the defendant’s service launch, nor was there evidence that consumers or industry stakeholders associated Safaricom Reverse Call Feature with Jichomoe,” Justice F. Mugambi said in his ruling in February.
“Copyright law protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves,” he added. Among the cases the court quoted was a previous copyright case where Simon Omondi also sued the telecommunications giant. In that case, filed in 2011, Simon said that he had submitted a business proposal to Safaricom in 2009 describing a service promotion called ‘Maliza story.’
Although mainly similar, the ruling in Simon’s case included a reminder that it “it would have been in the interest of morality and institutional reputation of the defendant to have appreciated the plaintiff.”
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