Registration of NDC logo alone cannot confer ownership

....Copyright boss

The Copyright administrator, Yaa Atefuah is in hot soup after failing to establish tangible reasons for registering the National Democratic Congress (NDC) logo to wife of the party’s founder Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings without due diligence.

Yaa Atefuah disclosed in an interview with Gold Power drive host Alhassan Suhuyini on Tuesday, that she did not contact the NDC leadership about the move of Nana Konadu to register the logo as her intellectual property and also did not follow the laid down procedure at the copyright office due to her personal knowledge about the former first lady as an artist.

“With my little knowledge, Mrs. Konadu Rawlings is an artist and a prominent member of the NDC. So if she brings something to the office that she created it and that it is her work, we did not doubt her”.

Yaa Atefuah, the Copyright administrator, was however quick to add that although Mrs. Rawlings has registered the NDC logo in her name, she cannot claim sole ownership of the logo.

‘’In copyright there is a principle of a formality frame, it is not the registration which gives you the ownership, it does not confer ownership’’.

“Under the law, under section 69 of the copyright act, the registration is to enable one ascertain a record of work, publicize the work, just as people are finding out whether something has been registered forever. It is also evidence of one’s intellectual property’’, she added.

“It doesn’t confer the ownership, when you register you are presumed to be the owner”, she said.

Meanwhile, a Deputy Minister of Information, Samuel Okudjeto Ablakwa is wondering why the former copyright administrator, Nana Bosomprah who once contested on the ticket of the NPP as parliamentary candidature for the Ada constituency is still walking free after starting the registration process for Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings.

But Nana Bosomprah has also expressed disappointment about the deputy minister’s call, saying he did not commit any crime.