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.
