Numerous disparaging articles have cast aspersions on my Please Call Me claim, which was proven and upheld by the Constitutional Court and the high court. It is important to give the facts of what has transpired, and where we are today as, with deep sadness, I approach our courts for a judicial review.
My product proposal of November 21 2000 shows that Please Call Me targeted prepaid and contract subscribers with or without airtime. The false claim peddled by Vodacom is that I proposed a product only for those without airtime.
Vodacom's product description document, which used my entire product proposal, was signed by all Vodacom directors in 2001 and the evidence shows Alan Knott-Craig snr confirmed that my product proposal formed the core basis of the Vodacom product document known today as the USSD-based Please Call Me product.
It is misleading, then, to say the current Please Call Me product differs from the product proposal I submitted to Vodacom.
Vodacom announced the launch on February 9 2001 to staff, thanking me for the idea, and flaunted me in their official Talktime magazine dated March 2001. In Vodacom's own words, "Call Me is a world first".
Vodacom's product description document states that competitor "MTN is not currently offering a similar service". The MTN patent was published on May 31 2001 and used interactive voice recognition, not the USSD platform launched by Vodacom. In an affidavit to the high court, Vodacom confirmed Please Call Me was my "brainchild".
On July 1 2014 the high court found that the agreement between myself and Vodacom was based on a share of revenue. The court also found that Knott-Craig, who claimed to be the inventor of Please Call Me in his book Second Is Nothing, had lied under oath about inventing Please Call Me...