Businessman demands RM1.3 mil from government over alleged infringement of MADANI plate copyright

A dispute has cropped up regarding the MADANI special number plate series, with a businessman having issued a demand for RM1.3 million from the government over an alleged copyright infringement of the plate and the idea behind it.

As the New Straits Times reports, Ilham Madani director Hasan Azhari Hashim has given the transport ministry and the road transport department (JPJ) seven days to pay the compensation before he files a civil suit over the matter.

In his letter of demand, the businessman claimed he was the rightful owner of the copyrighted work titled “Proposal Paper for the Creation of a Special Serial Vehicle Registration Number Madani 1 to Madani 9999 for Registration in Malaysia,” and said that the work had been lawfully registered in the copyright register under Section 26B of the Copyright Act.

Hasan claimed he sent a letter last year to prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim proposing a collaboration for the sale of the numbers, but the proposal fell through after the government declined the collaboration in a series of letters exchanged since last year.

The MADANI plate was announced last month, and bidding for the numbers in the series ran from October 19 to 23. On October 28, JPJ revealed that the plate series recorded a total revenue generation of RM2,623,329 when bidding ended on October 23, with ‘MADANI 6’ obtaining the highest bid of RM68,888. A total of 5,632 bids were received, with 3,263 successfully winning the vehicle registration numbers that they were interested in.

It has been previously stated that proceeds from the sales of the MADANI series are to be used by the transport ministry to realise government initiatives such as the MyLesen programme, helmet exchange programme, FLYsiswa and many more.

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