In a bid to properly educate and enlighten the Nigerian populace and the entertainment industry in particular, the Growth and Empowerment Project (GEM), funded by the World Bank and domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, has just entered into a new partnership with Copyright Society of Nigeria, (COSON), Nigeria’s wave making collective management organization.

In the partnership, GEM has domiciled at COSON House, a just developed tool kit for education in intellectual property with emphasis on copyright, aimed at ensuring a well-rounded, global understanding of the subject in Nigeria.

At a meeting held at the boardroom of COSON House, Ikeja, on Thursday August 9, 2018, during which the partnership was concluded, Mr. Bello Abba Yakasai, Cluster Manager, GEM Project, said that the initiative was borne out of the need to engender a culture of respect for intellectual property rights amongst practitioners in the industry and users of intellectual property in the country. This, he said appeared to have been difficult in the past, owing to the ambiguous nature of the subject.

Yakasai said “What we aim to achieve with this tool kit is to simplify the grey areas with respect to Intellectual Property so as to make it understandable by everyone. The IP manual, we are certain, will bring about a reorientation amongst everyone; be it the owners of the intellectual property or the end users”

The tool kit developed under the GEM project by Mr. John Asein, an internationally respected expert on copyright and a former Director of the Nigerian Copyright Institute will be formerly presented to the intellectual property community at a special event, “Let’s Talk Copyright” (LTC) which will hold at the COSON House Arena on September 1, 2018. Let’s Talk Copyright will be the climax of the 2018 No Music Day celebration.