Evans Gikunda, a web developer has sued Safaricom over infringement of intellectual rights. Evans is a former Radio Africa employee (as a web developer). He informed Patrick Quarcoo, the CEO of Radio Africa Group about Songa by Safaricom. Patrick Quarcoo in turn proposed for a partnership between Evans and Radio Africa Group, which Evans agreed to. Unfortunately, Evans left the company before finalizing on the issue of Songa by Safaricom app. Patrick sold the rights of ownership of the application to Safaricom without the involvement of Evans.
Gikunda, whose initial idea behind Songa by Safaricom was to engage users in the music streaming world has gone to court to Sue Safaricom over the act. He wanted to enable music streaming, radio listening, videos, and viewership of lyrics of songs.
In an interview Gikunda said;
That honourable court does declare that the plaintiff’s intellectual property rights in the platform, known as Songa by Safaricom have been and are likely to be continuously infringed, contravened and/or violated and therefore the plaintiff needs protection.
The application received some criticisms during the initial stages as well. The navigability of the app is damn hard. Some sections of the app are empty. The exclusive uses of the platform have been criticised to be ridiculously high. From the reviews of the app, it crashes often. The app lacks some local content.
