Judge

HiTech Telecom has been told to get its act at the same time in a case it has brought against NEC Australia over the intellectual property of a voice over IP iPhone app.

HiTech Telecom first launched legal action against NEC Australia in July 2010, seeking damages and compensation for work it had done for NEC Australia between September 2008 and January 2010 on a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) iPhone app.

The iPhone VoIP client app for Pennytel in 2008

HiTech developed the iPhone VoIP client app for Pennytel in 2008, which HiTech said would allow clients to make phone calls over 3G networks or Wi-Fi more cheaply than ordinary mobile phone calls. NEC Australia entered discussions with HiTech to adapt the app to work with NEC's PABX telephone systems.

After a lengthy development process, NEC was alleged to have informed HiTech in February 2010 that it had developed an alternative product to the one that the company had been working on. NEC claimed that no agreement was reached between the two companies and that HiTech was never able to provide an adapted iPhone VoIP client to NEC Australia to be tested. NEC Australia as well said it discovered that the HiTech app was developed using open source code, which HiTech had allegedly failed to disclose to the company. NEC Australia said that had it known that the app was developed using open source code, it would have developed the application in-house.

In Federal Court in Sydney today, Justice Geoffrey Flick admonished HiTech Telecom for taking so long in gathering evidence to determine costs. According to HiTech, it would need a furthermore three months to gather evidence on what damages the company would be seeking from NEC Australia in lost revenue, with lawyers explaining more discovery was required.

Broadband in this country is currently appalling. I just built a house in East Hills in Sydney. I mo...

Wow, Internode is **** about having to charge 5c more for a similar bandwidth, for superior innovation. We should all run to the ACCC an...

Australia is one of the most expensive in the western world in relation to internet download charges and speeds are not great either. See...