Authorship and Ownership of Copyright: A Critical Review

Abstract

Copyright is one of the rights of intellectual property. Copyright being a property right, raises important questions about ownership and the mechanisms for exploiting copyright. Authorship and ownership are, in relation to copyright, two distinct concepts, each of which attracts its own peculiar rights. The author having moral rights and the owners of the copyright possessing economic rights. Sometimes, the author of a work will also be the owner of the copyright in the work but this is not always so, and many works separate authors and owners as far as copyright is concerned. This paper examines the extent of rights conferred on the author and owner of a work by the Copyright Act, Cap C28, LFN 2004 and the limitations to the concept of authorship and ownership in a work made in the course of employment.