By Boluwatife Sanya
My employer is claiming copyright to a book I authored. Does he have such right?
While I was at the recently concluded Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association held in Lagos, I received a call from a childhood friend who is a Human Resource personnel in a publishing company.
He abandoned greetings and my attempt to ask about “our wife” (his madam) was met with a question. He said; “I authored a book and my M.D says it is his company that owns it. I have expended so much time and effort writing that book, does the company really own it?”
I immediately excused myself from the gathering and took my time to hear from him. The questions below and answers were able to resolve his issue.
Before proceeding to address this issue, I find it pertinent to give a short background to Copyright.
Summarily, copyright are rights that protect literary and artistic works. In other words, they are rights that creators have over their literary, artistic, musical, broadcasts, cinematography and sound recordings. For a work to enjoy copyright protection, it has to be original and fixed in a tangible medium.
There are broadly two rights that copyright clothes a creative. They are; Economic and Moral rights. Economic rights include the rights to reproduction, distribution to the public, publication, public performance, making a translation or an adaptation of the work, rental and broadcast.
Moral rights are the rights to integrity and paternity. Integrity...
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