Friday, August 19, 2011

eLDee battles Tecno phone over copyright




eLDee
China based phone manufacturing company: Tecno, makers of the Tecno brand of mobile phones, one of Nigeria’s top selling handsets, and who have a multitude of distributors and sales agents in Nigeria, is in a mess over the infringement of Nigerian musicians’ intellectual properties.
The company according to our source were alleged to have pre-loaded different songs recorded by some Nigerian artistes, onto memory cards which are embedded in the phones being sold without due consultations or permission from the artistes to use the songs.
What is however making matters worse is the fact that the company is not ready to compensate the acts whose rights were infringed.
Championing the course of Nigerian artistes in this ugly development is Lanre Dabiri, popularly known as eLDee.
Reports have it that eLDee and his consultants, Maxaro Consulting on realising that one of his songs, “Bosi Gbangba” is currently enlisted among the songs pre-loaded on the phones; approached the company to pay royalty for using the song.

Instead of the company showing remorse by granting the artiste audience and trying to reach a consensus, they arrogantly claimed they were helping the artiste to promote his song.
Following a case filed in the court, the presiding judge ordered eLDee and his lawyers to visit Tecno’s local agents and representatives and seize all the infringing phones and any documents related to them.