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Golden Sibanda Senior Business Reporter
TRUMBELT Computers, a local private company suing Telecel for infringement of intellectual property rights, claimed in court yesterday that the mobile network operator copied his ideas of a quiz promotion.The firm filed a lawsuit in the High Court claiming $340 000 for the loss of potential income after Telecel allegedly hijacked its campaign and implemented it with a different partner.

Through its legal counsel, Advocate Fadzai Mahere, Telecel has dismissed the claims as baseless arguing Trumbelt had no registered rights to the promotion as the concepts were generic.

However, Mr Tengende claimed that Telecel adopted and implemented specific details of the quiz based promotion he submitted to consider for a potential business partnership.

He said the details of the mechanics of how the campaign was to be implemented were novel and had never been implemented anywhere in the country by mobile phone operators.

Leading the evidence, chief executive chief executive Peterson Tengende’s legal counsel, Mr Moses Nkomo of Donsa-Nkomo and Mutangi Legal Practice requested the Trumbelt CEO to tell who originated the Telecel Mega Promo campaign, which is now under dispute and why he thought his ideas were hijacked.

“The promotion was novel in the environment. No such promotion had ever happened in the country whereby a winner was to be selected by a quiz and random draw.

“Telecel copied my model because when they implemented the proposal, they were also awarding winners  who had accumulated the highest number of points and where also awarding winners using the random basis, a process which is what was in the proposal that I gave them,” he said.

Mr Tengende also alleged that the frequency of prizes, quantum and specific prizes to winners of the promotion were exactly similar to the detailed account of what was in his proposal.

The Trumbelt CEO said Telecel proceeded to implement the promotion with Egyptian company ARPU Plus, as the technical partner, without his participation or benefit.

He said this was after a series of meetings between high profile representatives of the parties involved and certain agreements on the form and duration of the quiz promotion.

Cross examining the evidence Advocate Mahere dismissed claims by Mr Tengende, saying most of the concepts contained in the promotion ran by Telecel was generic and not original or exclusive, hence were not patented or trademarked.

She said he had not invented the concept of 50-50 revenue sharing, frequency of prizes, having a car for grand prize nor was he the one who originated the mega promo concept, all of which were part of the Telecel Mega Promo.

Further, she said Mr Tengende had no right to enter into binding agreement for or on behalf of Trumbelt’s foreign technical partner, Jet Telecom, which would provide the system to interact with Telecel’s platform for the quiz promotion.

Advocate Mahere said because Mr Tengende was not privy to the details of what Telecel agreed with its Egyptian Technical partners on the structure of the Telecel Mega Promo he was not qualified to tell the extent of the similarities between his proposal and that of ARPU Plus, which he was alleging had been copied from him.

She said Telecel previously ran the Mega Juice promotion, was already familiar with the clamp name “mega promo” Mr Tengende said he had coined, and would have proceeded with the initiative without having seen his proposal.