In Nigeria, people are innovative and creative, yet their financial gain ends at the court of law. Whether it is music or technology, the owners of intellectual property (IP) are finding the difficulty of receiving reasonable compensation when their rights are violated, not because the law is deaf and dumb, but because it is not valued.
The economic value of IP is still not judicial. Most courts continue to see infringement as a moral offense and not an economic harm. The outcome? Token awards that are not based on commercial reality.
In the case of the Pupayannis vs MTN & Others, the artist was only able to claim N20million of that which he was entitled to at 10%. Similarly, N2 million was awarded in Okiki Bright vs 9mobile, Globacom & Others, after six years of litigation, which is hardly enough to incur legal expenses. Such verdicts reveal a structural loophole: the lack of viable IP Valuation evidence in a court of justice.
By accepting and using expert evidence of valuation, a court makes an effective statement, the creative works are not an afterthought; they are assets. Where they use professional IP valuations, the damages are based on the realities in the market, they discourage infringement, and are consistent with international practices.
Courts in advanced jurisdictions such as the United States and the United Kingdom regularly rely on the services of IP valuation professionals who advise on the award of monetary damages in copyright, patent, and trademark cases.
They know that without economic evaluation, justice is symbolic and not compensatory. A similar commercial discipline is required in Nigeria’s judiciary.
The International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC) identifies IP, such as copyrights, trademarks, patents, and industrial designs, as intangible assets that can be valued using three primary methods, which are Cost, Market, and Income. These are practical techniques, which are the Relief-from-Royalty, Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), and the Excess Earnings models. Both of them offer an organized system to evaluate actual losses, projected profits, and reasonable compensation.
Read Also: CBN, finance ministry present Nigeria’s economic progress at G24 meetings
In cases where the economic value of IP is valued by courts, their decisions are both legally and financially credible.
To the inventors and rights’ owners, IP valuation is not merely a tool of the courtroom – it is a source of money. A sound valuation gives them strong bargaining power in the negotiation of disputes, licensing, and investment. It also sends a warning to those who may want to infringe that there are some economic repercussions of doing that. Such a change of attitude promotes licensing, prevents piracy, and re-characterizes the IP controversies as moral fights in the context of financial responsibility.
The judiciary in Nigeria has the key to unlock the huge potential of the nation’s creative economy. A value-based compensation judicial system creates investor confidence and allows IP-backed financing of industries like entertainment, technology, and pharmaceuticals. IP-backed financing is already a multi-billion-dollar asset class around the globe. Nigeria can develop its own form should valuation enters judicial opinion.
To do so, the judges working on IP cases need to be exposed to the principles of valuation in organized settings. The roster of certified IP valuation experts of the judicial courts should be maintained to offer independent technical opinions.
The judiciary, in partnership with the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), Trademarks Registry, and financial institutions, ought to come up with valuation policies, disclosure procedures, and licensing and royalty transfer databases. Such data infrastructure will enhance comparability and increase the credibility of the expert reports.
Once IP valuation becomes a common court procedure, then innovation is bankable. Start-ups are able to collateralise their IP, investors can price intangible assets with confidence, and inventors are able to be fully compensated on a full-value basis. Its ripple effects will be increased expenditure in R&D, employment, and quantifiable input in the growth of GDP.
Nigeria is the place of innovation and justice. Should the judiciary institutionalise IP valuation as a standard of evidence and economic valuation, it will accomplish not merely the reinforcement of the rule of law, but the transformation of the creative into the capital, which is a rather obvious departure from oil dependence.
By judicial reform, here I do not mean legal reform, but economic reform. Some court results on reliable IP valuation create confidence in securitization, licensing, and financing innovation. Once the logic of valuation is used consistently by the courts in Nigeria, the creative and knowledge economy of the nation can finally become performance-oriented as opposed to potential.
– Lekan Akinwumi, an Estate Surveyor and Valuer, Principal Partner, Lekan Akinwumi & Co, is a specialist in Intellectual Property (IP) Valuation and Securitization. He is a PhD student who wrote from Lagos, is working on “Developing a Framework for Intellectual Property Valuation and Securitization in Nigeria.”
