#IPDayOnGMABC: Ghanaian artistes lack knowledge about intellectual property rights – Lawyer reveals

Ghanaian Lawyer Bobby Banson has mentioned that numerous artistes in the country lack understanding when it comes to what intellectual property rights are.
Explaining what exactly the term intellectual property means, he shared that it is simply the act of monetising your God given talent.
“Being able to make money out of your God given talent as a musician, beats maker or an author is termed intellectual property. The keyword in defining intellectual property is always original. This means it is being done by you with your God given wisdom you didn’t learn from anyone”.
Per his observation, the main challenge some Ghanaian artistes face when it comes to monetising their talent is all because they lack the knowledge and know how about intellectual property.
Talking to Doctar Cann on Happy 98.9 FM’s Showbiz Xtra he said, “Unfortunately we have artistes who don’t know that their intellectual property has been breached and they are entitled to damages because they lack education on such issues”.
He shared that having worked with a couple of Ghanaian artistes, he can boldly say that most of our artistes are ignorant about intellectual property and how they can make good use of it.
Citing an example he said, “They see their songs used in a movie whereas their permission was not sought. In such a case, the artiste has every right to sue the producers of that particular movie because they have breached his or her intellectual property right by not asking for permission and the artiste is entitled to damages”.
Bobby mentioned that what the producers of the movie don’t know is that, the audience of the artiste will assume that he or she has endorsed the movie and are also taking advantage of the reputation of the artiste because, “there are a lot of songs but you still chose mine. Why did you choose mine? It is because you felt it will fit into a certain context you want to portray so you need to pay for that”.
He went on to say that, a lot of artistes don’t really care about the background work such as knowing more about intellectual property right and all about it because it normally involves a lot, “all they want is for their songs to be played in movies and on radio and you realise that 3 years down the lane you’ll notice the artiste is still famous but without any benefits and without what they deserve”.
The lawyer noted that artistes should educate themselves more about intellectual property rights and how to use it to their advantage to protect their economic values because, “you have to understand that you won’t be producing music for the rest of your life, there will be a different demand which you may not have so take advantage of your time now”.
By: Gyamfuah Owusu-Ackom