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Legal News & Articles

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LearningTheLaw > Legal News & Articles (Page 7)

Trademarks in Nigeria: Definition, Nature and Functions Under the Trade Marks Act

Walk into any major supermarket in Lagos or Kano and the shelves tell a story of trademark law in action. The red-and-white Indomie packaging, the distinctive Coca-Cola bottle shape, the Dangote logo on bags of cement, the green MTN branding across every billboard on the expressway: each of these is a trademark, each is a registered piece of intellectual property, and each represents a business decision to invest in a brand identity that the law will protect against imitation. Now step outside and walk past the roadside market, where counterfeit Indomie noodles in packaging barely distinguishable from the original are...

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Copyright in Computer Programs and Digital Works in Nigeria

Walk into any computer repair shop in Alaba International Market or along Computer Village in Ikeja and you will almost certainly find Windows and Microsoft Office being installed on customer machines from bootleg discs or USB drives, for a small fee. Visit any Nigerian university campus and you will find students using pirated versions of SPSS, AutoCAD, and Adobe Creative Suite without a second thought. The Nigerian software market, by most credible estimates, has historically had software piracy rates among the highest in the world, a situation that persisted for decades in part because the old copyright framework provided inadequate...

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Remedies for Copyright Infringement in Nigeria: Civil and Criminal Action

In 2020, the Court of Appeal in Lagos Division upheld an award of N5.4 billion against Multichoice Nigeria for using copyrighted musical works across its DSTV platform without licence or payment. It is, to date, the largest published copyright damages award in Nigerian legal history, and it did not happen because Multichoice was a careless or unsophisticated operator. It happened because the company failed to ensure it held valid licences for the works it was broadcasting, and because the rights holder had the means and the determination to pursue the full range of remedies the law makes available. Understanding remedies is...

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Copyright Infringement in Nigeria: Elements, Defences and Burden of Proof

An Afrobeats producer samples a two-bar percussion loop from a 1974 highlife recording and builds an entirely new track around it. A fashion blogger reposts a photographer's image on Instagram with a different watermark and no credit. A printing shop reproduces fifty copies of a Nigerian textbook for a group of university students. In each scenario someone has used a copyrighted work without permission. The question this article answers is what the copyright owner must prove to succeed in an infringement action, what the defendant can argue in response, and how the burden of proof operates in proceedings before the...

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