Download This PaperRethinking Transactional Jurisprudence in Copyright: Nigeria’s Unconscious Edge
15 Lagos State University Law Journal 165 (2020)
24 Pages Posted: 27 Mar 2020 Last revised: 18 Jan 2021
Date Written: December 1, 2019
Abstract
Copyright in this millennium is undergoing jurisprudential restructuring on its goals and relevance. The pendulum of contending schools of thought in existing literature and public space swings between calls for less copyright and that of enhanced copyright. The less copyright spectrum cites the elitist and monopolistic character of copyright as reason for its irrelevance. On the other side, the enhanced copyright scale cites the advent of modern means of production spurred by technological methods for the need to enhance copyright with technological measures and other legal regime’s like contract and licensing. Nigeria lags in positioning its copyright laws to reflect new economic and digital production systems. However, unknown to many legal scholars and existing literature, Nigeria’s contract jurisprudence in protecting copyright and other proprietary right has been ahead of other national regimes. Nigerian copyright regime had projected even beyond laws of developed countries the significance and weight of licensing systems in creative proprietary rights enforcement. This paper explores the Nigerian copyright regime’s inadvertent foray ahead of other legal systems in using contract as a means of enforcing copyright ownership. However, the Nigerian copyright law must address the legal tensions between digital copyright and contract deliverables in the creative platforms. This paper uses the Nigerian cinematographic creative industry, Nollywood as a starting point of rethinking current contract enforcement ecosystems.
Keywords: Nollywood, Jurisprudence, Copyright, Digital Copyright, Artificial Intelligence
JEL Classification: K33
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