Receivers encounter stiff resistance over IP

Tim Bradd and Andrew Yeo have been encountering stiff resistance to their plan to publicly examine a professor and senior executive staff of La Trobe University about the affairs of online education provider Didasko Institute, to which the Pitcher Partners pair were appointed receivers on March 17, 2023.

“Sorry – I am not prepared to even go back to my appointor tonight with that sort of figure – I would be honestly wasting all of our time. Pitcher Partners Andrew Yeo.

Bradd and Yeo applied for summonses in April last year but the proposed examinees – former vice chancellor and president of La Trobe professor John Dewar, chief financial officer Jodie Banfield, chief operating officer Mark Smith, chief commercial officer Taryn Fulton and executive director of operations Bridget Soulsby – demonstrated a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

In July of 2024 they filed an application for access to the confidential affidavit Yeo had deposed to in support of his and Bradd’s examination summons application.

The examinees’ lawyer Alex Bannister of Lander & Rogers backed that application with three affidavits of his own.

The examinees also sought orders dismissing the summonses on the basis that they had been sought for an improper purpose and were an abuse of process.

Their application was heard in August 2024 but judgment wasn’t delivered until March this year, with Supreme Court of Victoria judicial registrar Claire Gitsham rejecting the examinees’ arguments.

Gitsham’s decision was promptly appealed and almost as promptly decided, again in the receivers’ favour as can be seen in Ex parte Yeo and Bradd; Re Didasko Institute Pty Ltd (rec apptd) (in liq) [2025] VSC 322. Presumably La Trobe has a directors and officers indemnity scheme.

The resistance the receivers encountered would appear to focus on their intention to grip the examinees about the Course Services Agreement Didasko entered into with La Trobe in 2017, pursuant to which Didasko provided various La Trobe courses under licence, along with other services.

Yeo and Bradd were appointed receivers by Didasko’s secured creditor Melbourne Education Nominees Pty Ltd (MEN), which counts Melbourne developer Stewart Baron, Ceres Capital’s Sam Brougham, and AngloGold Ashanti CEO Alberto Calderon on its board and share register.

The appointment stifled Didasko’s ability to trade and within a week the university’s lawyers had emailed the receivers requesting information about La Trobe students and their academic progress, communications between Didasko staff and La Trobe students and course materials prepared for La Trobe.

Yeo asked the university to make an offer in exchange for the receivers’ compliance with the information request and after $30,000 was proffered Yeo responded thus:

“Sorry – I am not prepared to even go back to my appointor tonight with that sort of figure – I would be honestly wasting all of our time.

“Our client is owed over $3 million and LaTrobe was being billed (on average) approx $500k per month.

“If your instructions are more aligned to those numbers, then I can start a discussion,” Yeo concluded.

You would think that a much improved offer – as was subsequently made and accepted following entry into a Data Transfer Agreement – might diminish the odds of further dispute. Negative.

After Didasko was wound up via creditors voluntary liquidation (CVL) in April 2023 with PKF’s Jason Stone and Paul Allen appointed as liquidators Bradd, Yeo and La Trobe began bickering about which of them held the rights to the intellectual property (IP) contained within the Course Material under the Course Services Agreement.

La Trobe, relying on the wording of a Teach Out and Variation Deed entered into with Didasko on or about 12 or 13 October 2022, asserted that the deed granted the university a permanent and irrevocable licence to the Course Materials for its teaching purposes.

The receivers’ view was that any license La Trobe had to use the IP had expired and was revoked.

Further, they said that without the written consent of MEN, Didasko had no right to enter into the Teach Out and Variation deed in circumstances where it was in default.

That dispute carried the parties through 2023 and in the following year Bradd and Yeo applied for the examination summonses.

With their appeal lost the examinees look set to appear in the witness box, assuming no new plank can be found to re-stiffen resistance lost.