On the intellectual property front, Safaricom has been accused of stifling innovation through theft.
A Kenyan has come forth accusing the Telco of lifting his submitted proposal about the MPESA Visa card.
“Hello Cyprian, I have an issue I have tried to resolve diplomatically with Safaricom but they won’t budge even after stealing a proposal I shared with them in 2019. I gave a proposal on how they can come up with an Mpesa Visa-enabled card to make online payments to e-commerce platforms like Alibaba, Amazon etc (item number 5) of my proposal”, Steve Muikia.
Safaricom launched MPESA Visa cards this year in May. Muikia sent his proposal in 2019.
“This year they have introduced the same and to make the make matters worse they developed it to look exactly as the one I sent. How can that be a coincidence? C ni wizi..look at theirs (shared below)”, Muikia wrote.
Just like other innovators who the Telco has swindled, Muikia has evidence of correspondence.
Many would brush off Steve Muikia’s claim, of course, some would say, what is so unique about that proposal or why didn’t he register as a Utility Model etc.
What those people don’t know is that Safaricom does not respect the law, whether one registered or signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), Safaricom has been shown to steal even those.
Over the past year, cnyakundi.com has covered such cases of intellectual property thefts by the rogue Telco.
Safaricom manipulated its dominant role by asking youth and other Kenyan innovators to send their innovative ideas to its Zindua Portal.
READ: Transcend Saga: Safaricom, Vodafone and how Sylvia Mulinge is Ms ‘fix-it’ in corrupt deals
Some of the registered, unregistered, original and unoriginal that were sent to the portal later were floated as emanating from Safaricom creative teams.
Protests are met by court cases, intimidation and even death threats.
Currently, Safaricom is battling court cases of flouting Non-Disclosure Agreements, outright stealing of Intellectual property registered by Kenya Industrial Property Institute (KIPI) etc.
Of course, there’s a blame that can be put on some innovators. For example, some don’t understand the intellectual property laws and that one needs to register their creation in order to have a chance at the court of getting paid when it is stolen or getting paid when it is taken up.
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