Intellectual property expert and legal manager for Roc Studios a subsidiary of THEMA, CANAL + International, Angela Anukam offered insight into this unending cases of litigations on intellectual property.
She said: “First, as an entertainment lawyer, you are wearing different hats. You are going to be advising on different aspects of media and entertainment law which would cover anywhere from music to content production and every aspect of intellectual property. The core of what I do is ensuring that in the course of our business, we are protected in any form of liabilities. There are a lot of cases in court bordering on intellectual property because a lot of people are not entirely enlightened about their rights to intellectual property or even some of them that willfully disregard the law because they think there are no consequences. People now need to know that with the new copyright act that was put forward in 2023, there are more provisions that offer more protection than what we used to have in the past. Before it was reviewed in 2023, it was in 1988. You can see that review.
Intellectual property is intangible but you can monetize it and in the monetization we also have to be mindful that we are not using somebody else’s intellectual property.
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In what should a creative person look out for, Anukam shares her perspective
“There are commonalities but it is not all the time. Some of the key terms you will find in music licensing for instance, you will not find it in content production but the one thing that they have in common is that intellectual property must be protected and in that protection, you have to ensure that whatever you want to use you are the owner or you have licensed it from the original author or the original owner of the film or music. For instance, on ROC channels, we have a lot of content. If we are not producing it ourselves and we licence it, we have to have agreements in place that kind of state all the terms of the licensing. The key terms would cover the use of that work. There is also compensation. With a licence comes compensation, you have to pay someone for the use of their music or film or whatever else.”