Satyam Loses Appeal against High Court Judgment in Upaid Case

Online and mobile payments service leader, Upaid Systems, has today

announced that the Court of Appeal in London affirmed a January High

Court Judgment in Upaid´s favour against

Satyam Computer Services, soundly rejecting the Indian software leader´s

effort to block Upaid´s fraud and forgery

claims in a Texas court.
The decision confirms an earlier High Court judgment in favour of Upaid

on all points. This ruling allows Upaid´s lawsuit against Satyam

alleging forgery, fraud, misrepresentation, and breach of contract, and

what Satyam admits are "extremely large sums

of money", to proceed to a US trial by jury in

a Texas federal court.
Upaid originally filed the Texas lawsuit in April 2007 following the

revelation in Texas of forged documents previously provided by Satyam to

Upaid. Satyam had sought a High Court injunction in London in September

2007 to try to block the Texas case, arguing that a 2003 commercial

agreement terminating the relationship between the two companies

precluded all future claims against it for all past practices and that

any residual claims against it had to be tried in London.
The High Court categorically refused Satyam´s request in January 2008.

After hearing testimony from senior executives of both companies and

legal experts in a four day trial, the Court ruled that the Texas claims

could proceed. Satyam appealed this decision, and it was this appeal

which was comprehensively dismissed last Friday by a Court of Appeal

panel presided over by Lord Justice Waller, Vice President of the Court

of Appeal Civil Division.
Costs were awarded against Satyam. In their further plea to the Court of

Appeal for leave to appeal to the House of Lords Satyam first admitted

publicly that, ""¦the

effect of the judgment is that collateral proceedings in Texas will

proceed. These are likely to be highly detrimental to the Appellant and

extremely large sums of money are at stake."
Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was denied by the Court of Appeal.
Upaid spokesperson Joanne Hunter commented, "We think this case is of

considerable importance. Satyam is one of India´s largest and best known

providers of outsourced software services. As they themselves said last

Friday, the Court of Appeal result is likely to be very detrimental to

them and a lot is at stake. This is a very serious case of misconduct

that involves fraud and forgery by one of India´s

leading software companies. The damage done to Upaid has been made even

worse by the time wasted in London while Satyam tried to avoid the

consequences of their own actions, rather than doing all it could to

help a former customer by addressing the substantive issues raised in

Texas. But, with the London issues out of the way, we can now look

forward to dealing with what really matters in Texas, where the

forgeries first came to light."
The full Court of Appeal Judgment can be found at the following link:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2008/487.html
About Upaid
Upaid is the mobile and online payments specialist. Applications range

from the recharge of prepaid accounts via SMS, to electronic bill

payment and presentment, to billing for mobile content. The Upaid

platform supports a complete eco-system for mobile commerce, giving

users the choice of an operator-driven or independent billing system.
Upaid holds a portfolio of over 1,000 granted patents in the arena of e-

and m-commerce. We work with Brazil´s leading

mobile operators and banks to enable recharge transactions, serving a

user base of over 50 million consumers, processing 2 million

transactions per month. Upaid holds the franchise for VISA Mobile

Service in the CEMEA region. Upaid has offices in the US, UK, and

Brazil. Upaid is a registered trademark of Upaid Systems, Ltd.
For more information, please visit www.upaid.net.