AstuteWheel serves Cease and Desist letter on Lumiant for alleged substantial copyright breach

SYDNEY: 12 July 2021 – Astute Wealth Advice Pty Limited (Astute Wealth), creators of leading client engagement platform AstuteWheel, has today served a Cease and Desist letter on Lumiant Pty Limited (Lumiant) alleging substantial copyright breach.

Lumiant has loaded a financial health questionnaire, the Lumiant Confidence Questionnaire (the Questionnaire), onto its platform. The Questionnaire uses substantially the same words as almost all of the text in AstuteWheel’s 5-minute Health Check (the Health Check), offered continuously by Astute Wealth since 2011, and replicates its functionality.

Astute Wealth Managing Director, Hans Egger said, “It is extremely disappointing to discover that a financial services company appears to have copied our material. Given all that has happened in and to the financial advice industry in Australia over the past decade, if any industry knows how imperative it is to behave with honesty and integrity, it is this one.”

Mr Egger said that the substantial similarity in the words used in the Questionnaire, coupled with the fact that Lumiant had specifically mentioned AstuteWheel as a domestic competitor in a fundraising Offer Document dated 11 November 2020, indicated that it is likely that Lumiant had copied Astute Wealth’s material.

“We will not stand by and allow Lumiant to reproduce our intellectual property for their commercial advantage,” he said.

The questions within the Health Check are grouped into different parts. A comparison between the Health Check and the Questionnaire, reveals that:

1. Of 31 questions asked in the “employed” part, and 35 questions asked in the “self-employed” part of the Lumiant Confidence Questionnaire:
   1. 24 are exactly the same except for the pronoun changing from my/mine to you/your;
   2. 6 questions have minor changes in wording but are substantially the same
2. Of the 24 questions asked in the “retired” part of the Lumiant Confidence Questionnaire:
   1. 20 are exactly the same except for the pronoun changing from my/mine to you/your; and
   2. 4 questions have minor changes in wording but are substantially the same
3. Of the 32 questions asked in the “home duties” and “unemployed” parts of the Lumiant Confidence Questionnaire:
   1. 22 are exactly the same except for the pronoun changing from my/mine to you/your; and
   2. 7 questions have minor changes in wording but are substantially the same.

Astute Wealth also alleges that the rating questions and scores are very similar. A more detailed Schedule of Similarities is available at the following link Schedule of Similarities.

Astute Wealth intends to commence proceedings against Lumiant, unless certain terms are met by 20 July 2021.

The terms include:

• Lumiant informing all clients who have used the Questionnaire that the Questionnaire infringed Astute Wealth’s copyright
• Lumiant ceasing to make the Questionnaire available
• Lumiant giving an undertaking that it will immediately cease and forever desist from:
  • Marketing, promoting and/or advertising the Questionnaire
  • Reproducing, communicating to the public, and supplying the Questionnaire; and
• Lumiant forever desisting from reproducing in whole or in substantial part AstuteWheel’s Health Check, or any other copyright work of Astute Wealth without the licence of Astute Wealth.

About AstuteWheel

Launched in 2012, AstuteWheel is an Australian owned fintech business providing financial planning software. AstuteWheel is now Australia’s leading financial planning client engagement solution, providing financial advisers with goals based advice, scope of advice, education and marketing tools, online questionnaires and financial modelling calculators. The structured and technology assisted process provides improved compliance and helps clients understand the financial advice value proposition. For more information visit www.astutewheel.com.au