In this case there was no doubt that the defendant did not have the type of product that the
plaintiff wanted to provide. There is also e-mail evidence that the defendant actively
engaged the plaintiff in trying to source his product for their customers. A formal
proposal was then sent by the plaintiff to the defendant dated 7th May 2007. The parties
were to conclude a formal contract on this proposal but never did largely because the
defendant chose to go with the product from Google.
The question is was there exchange of confidential information in the process. A review
of the e-mails exchanged does not show that the parties actual envisaged that there were
dealing with confidential information. Further more a look at the proposal especially the
section technical specifications reveals to my mind a description of how the product
works without any technical information at all like source codes. There was also no
comparison of the technical specifications between the plaintiff’s product and that of
Google within the understanding of the case of Saltman Engineering Co Ltd (supra).
To my mind, the Plaintiff is seeking to protect an idea, rather than an original product.
Because of this nuance, and the fact that the Defendant never formally accepted the
Plaintiff’s proposal, the Defendant was free to negotiate with other companies for a
similar product. Other nations had used the product before, so it would not have been
impossible for Google to come up with the idea of an SMS brokerage content provision
system on their own without any help from the Plaintiff’s proposal.
Based on the evidence on record the Defendant was under no obligation to inform the
Plaintiff of simultaneous negotiations, so when the Defendant chose to work with Google
and deny the Plaintiff’s proposal after months of negotiation, this was within the
Defendant’s right to do so. The defendant however could have been more transparent
with the plaintiff in their dealings with him as they even went as far as demanding that he
procures a leased line from them and SMPTP Port when in reality they did not intend to
use his product. In this regard they had to refund the plaintiff Shs 2,000,000/=.
Transparency is a cardinal principle of good corporate governance. The Plaintiff none the
less was unable during trial to provide any source codes to distinguish its product from
any other, I find that the Plaintiff cannot seek protection of this idea.
I therefore answer the second issue in the negative that there was no breach of the
defendant’s rights.
Issue No. 3:
What remedies are available to the parties?
Based on my findings above I decline to make a declaration that the defendant was in
breach of disclosing confidential information.
I accordingly dismiss the suit.