26 June

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Duration of Copyright in Nigeria: How Long Does Protection Last?

Chinua Achebe died on 21 March 2013. He left behind Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, and a body of critical and poetic work that generations of Nigerian school children have read, studied, and built upon. The question that ultimately governs how freely future Nigerian writers, adaptors, educators, and publishers can use these works is not merely one of literary respect but of copyright law: when do Achebe's works enter the public domain? The answer to that question, and the principles that govern it across all categories of creative work in Nigeria,...

26 June

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Moral Rights in Nigerian Copyright Law: Attribution, Integrity and the 2022 Act Changes

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law

A spoken-word poet performs a piece at a Lagos open-mic night, records it on a phone, and posts it online. Within a week the video has been re-shared hundreds of times. By the second week, a motivational account with half a million followers has posted the entire poem as a screenshot with no credit. A different account has taken the first verse and appended it to a self-help message that subtly distorts the poet's original meaning. A third account has posted it under a different person's name altogether. None of these accounts paid the poet anything. But more than the...

26 June

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Economic Rights of Copyright Owners in Nigeria

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law

A hotel in Victoria Island plays a curated playlist of Afrobeats music in its lobby and poolside areas, seven days a week, to create atmosphere for paying guests. A cable television provider transmits music videos and films carrying background scores composed by Nigerian artists. A streaming platform makes an Afrobeats album available for on-demand listening anywhere in the world. In all three scenarios, copyrighted works are being commercially exploited by parties who have not created them. The question this article answers is what rights the creators and rights holders actually hold against these parties, and what the Copyright Act 2022...

26 June

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Copyright Ownership in Nigeria: Authors, Joint Authors, Employers and Commissioners

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law

A wedding videographer in Abuja films a couple's traditional engagement ceremony and later discovers the couple has reposted clips of his footage, with his watermark removed, on a paid promotional reel for their own business. A session vocalist records the hook on what becomes a chart-topping Afrobeats single, while the actual composer wrote every note and lyric in advance. A graphic designer employed full-time by a Lagos advertising agency creates a campaign logo during work hours, then later freelances the exact same design to a rival client. In every one of these situations, the underlying creative work is plainly eligible...

21 June

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What is Intellectual Property Law in Nigeria?

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law

Every time a Nollywood producer releases a film, an Afrobeats musician records a song, or a manufacturer in Aba puts a label on a shoe, intellectual property law is working in the background. It decides who owns the idea, who can profit from it, and who can be stopped when someone else tries to take it. For Nigerian law students, understanding what intellectual property law is and how it operates in Nigeria is not just an academic exercise. The industries that intellectual property law governs, from music and film to pharmaceuticals and consumer goods, sit at the heart of the...

21 June

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Conditions for Copyright Protection in Nigeria: Originality, Fixation and Qualifying Factors

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law, Legal News

A Nigerian software company discovers that a competitor has installed unlicensed copies of Microsoft Windows across its entire office network. Microsoft Corporation, a company incorporated in the United States, wants to sue for infringement in a Nigerian court. Does it have any right to do so? This is not a hypothetical concern. It is, almost word for word, the question that reached the Nigerian Court of Appeal in 2011, and the answer the court gave has shaped how foreign copyright owners approach Nigerian litigation ever since. Works Eligible for Copyright in Nigeria Under the Copyright Act 2022 established what kind of...

21 June

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Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law

A university student in Ibadan films a comedy skit on her phone, writes the jingle that plays over it herself, and posts it online. A software developer in Yaba builds a budgeting app and writes every line of its code from scratch. An Afrobeats producer lays a new beat under a sample of a forgotten highlife record from the 1970s. All three have created something. The question this article answers is which of these creations actually qualifies for copyright protection under Nigerian law, and what conditions each one must satisfy before the law will recognise it as a protected work...

21 June

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International Copyright Conventions and Nigeria: Berne, Rome, UCC and TRIPS

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law

When a Nollywood film streams in London, when an Afrobeats producer samples a Jamaican dancehall riddim, or when a UK record label licenses a Burna Boy track for an advertisement, a quiet question sits underneath the transaction: whose copyright law applies, and does Nigerian protection mean anything outside Nigeria's borders? The answer lies in a small group of international treaties that Nigeria has joined over the past three decades. Understanding what these treaties require, and just as importantly, what Nigeria has and has not actually brought into its domestic law, is essential before any other topic in copyright law can...

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