While “you don’t need to register your creation, when you do, it’s a very huge advantage,” Intellectual Property (IP) Lawyer Onyinyechukwu Mary-Magdalene Dotsey has underlined.

“It keeps a record of whatever it is you’ve created,” she explained.

Determining the date of creation can be tricky, “so immediately you finish your work, and you affix it into a medium, something tangible – a CD, for instance – it’s important to register it,” she urged.

“It gives you the leverage of that time,” she explained.

“This way, if you have to go to court for enforcement, it makes it very easy, since you can go to the copyright office and get evidence of your registration and point to the date,” Mrs Dotsey continued.

“When it comes to enforcing copyrights, the date of creation is very important,” she emphasised, explaining the one who presents an earlier date asserts legitimacy above his opponent in court.

Buttressing, IP Lawyer Sarah Anku highlighted Ghana’s law says “registration is a primacy evidence of ownership”.

Thus, “the copyright office will issue you a certificate and when it’s time for enforcement, all you need to do is show that certificate and the work starts from there,” the popular IP lawyer added. “The court would presume indeed the work belongs to you.”

She cited a recent case she handled where an immediate bottleneck was the creation had not been registered. Eventually, she added, it took the intervention of technology to estimate the date of creation.

“So registration, even though not mandatory, is very important because you need it for enforcement. And in other jurisdictions, without registration, you may not even be able to enforce your rights,” she cautioned.   

Lawyers Mary-Magdalene Dotsey and Sarah Anku were panelists during the first-ever Annual Conference of the Performing Arts, organised and hosted by the National Theatre, Accra, on October 2 & 3, 2024.

The IP Lawyers further informed the audience the duration of a copyright was only 70 years. The years are calculated from the end of the year of creation, Mrs Sarah Anku explained.