One of India’s largest multinational companies, information technology firm Wipro, is being taken to court for allegedly appropriating the intellectual property (IP) of a small South African nonprofit organisation.
The dispute centres on a South African training initiative.
Wipro was accorded exclusive sponsorship for the South African Collaborative Stakeholder Movement’s (CSM’s) chief information officer training programme, which was to be launched in September 2014.
CSM CE Martin Humphries said CSM had entered into a partnership with Wipro, based on CSM’s ideas and IP, but that Wipro suddenly seemed to have gotten cold feet.
“The next we knew, they had gone behind our backs and launched an identical training scheme to the one we at CSM had devised,” he stated.
“The training course that CSM designed ticks every box for economic development in South Africa – with a focus on job creation, skills development, black economic empowerment and international partnership in the context of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, or Brics, grouping.
“We are determined to see this matter through in the courts,” said Humphries.