PMAN threatens to sue Lai Mohammed over ‘intellectual property theft’

The Performing Musicians Employers Association of Nigeria (PMAN) has accused Lai Mohammed, minister of information, of intellectual property theft.

The association, in a statement on its Facebook page, said the recently convened ‘Creative Industry Financing Conference’ heavily contained ideas from a proposal it had earlier submitted to the minister.

PMAN said its proposal was entitled ‘Bar Coding Technology for the Creative Industry in Nigeria’.

The proposal which detailed plans on how to boost the creative industry, PMAN said, was handed to the minister during a presentation meeting led by the body’s president, Petty Okafor, on August 5, 2016.

The body said the proposal contained ideas on how to improve the creative industry and generate over N15 trillion revenue for the government.

According to PMAN, the recommendations in its proposal were what the government went ahead to implement under the guise of the ‘Creative Industry Financing Conference’.

Ifeanyi Ejiofor, counsel to PMAN, in a five-page petition, said, “Though the conference was deceptively tagged “creative industry financing conference”, it is our client’s firm belief that the conference was held in full implementation of our client’s original brain child and ideas as clearly highlighted in their respective presentation of 5th August, 2016 and Action Plan of 18th August, 2016, all in the possession of the Ministry of Information and Culture”.

PMAN gave the minister an ultimatum of 72 hours to desist from continuing with the plans in the proposal or be sued for violation of intellectual property.

“Our client viewed this action as a grave infringement of their intellectual property rights and dubious conversion of their brain child ideas and concept, originating from painstaking professional study, research and investigation that gulped them over N500,000,” the petition read.