A man has moved to court claiming the ownership of the National Education Management Information System (Nemis).
In the court documents, claimed that he was the copyright owner of a computer software program known as Institutions Network.
The petitioner claimed to have presented his program to the Ministry of Education back in 2014 seeking a partnership.
However, he revealed that his proposal was declined but later on in 2018, the government launched the Nemis program which was similar to his idea.
“Netresource Ltd intended to license the copyrighted computer program to the Ministry of Education at Ksh 50,000 per institution,” his application read.
The man sued the Ministry, Education Cabinet Secretary, the Attorney-General, and an IT employee at the ministry.
According to court papers, most of the correspondence to the Ministry of Education was never received in the official stamp and that communication to his company from the ministry officials was through personal emails and phone numbers.
Through his application, it has indicated that those acts were carried out with ill motives maliciously intended to fraudulently infringe on Netresource’s proprietary rights in computer software and/or program known as Institutional Network.
He revealed that he was invited to make a presentation on his program to showcase and pitch its usefulness where he submitted the codes to the copyrighted program, together with its database to an IT officer at the Ministry.
Having been satisfied by his presentation on the concept note, officials at the ministry wrote a preliminary report appraising the matter. Later the report was forwarded to Director Partnerships which was shared through email between the two parties.
He added that there was a planned meeting between his company, then Education CS Fred Matiang’i, Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang, and the Director General which was aborted at the last minute in March 2017.
On the other hand, Principal State Counsel Emmanuel Kiarie highlighted that it had not alluded to any contract between Netresource and the Ministry of Education which meant there was no breach of contract. He added that Netresource had failed to demonstrate how Nemis had Infringed on copyright work relating to Institutions Network.
