Protecting Copyright Owners in Nigeria: A Panacea for Intellectual Development

Abstract

The paper focused at the protection of copyright owners in Nigeria a panacea for intellectual development. A descriptive survey design was adopted in carrying out the study. The population of the study consist of librarians and law lecturers in the Universities of Port Harcourt and Benin, Nigeria. From the population, a sample size of 112 was randomly selected for the study. Three research objectives guided the study. The study utilized a self-developed questionnaire for data collection. A total of 112 copies of the questionnaire were distributed to librarians, library officers and law lecturers, out of which 108 copies were duly filled and returned, representing 96.4.%. The collected data was analyzed using percentage and mean score. The findings revealed that protection of copyright will protect owners and encourage intellectual works in Nigeria. The result also revealed that the right to intellectual properties is one of the ways to encourage intellectual content owners. The finding revealed that copyright protection provides security for intellectual products. Based on the research findings, it was recommended that owners of intellectual properties deserve good earnings for their intellectual works in order to promote Knowledge proliferation and availability so as to meet the reading needs of the citizens at the various levels. The study also recommended that all cases relating to copyright violation in our courts should be summarily dealt with. The study advocated that the provision on the punishment should be reviewed such that it can deter people from infringing on authors rights.

URL: http://ijkcdt.net/xml/22686/22686.pdf