Status of Orphan Works under the Nigerian Copyright Legal Regime

Abstract

A consequence of intellectual property right regarding a copyrighted work is the benefit that accrues to a copyright owner when another seeks to utilise the property in good faith. However, there seems to be a clog where works are “orphaned”, and the owner is unknown. Any original work of authorship for which a good faith prospective user cannot quickly identify and/or locate the copyright holder in a scenario where the copyright owner’s permission is required by law is considered an orphan work. The complexities of orphan works give rise to social, economic, and religious perspectives. Particularly, orphan works in relation to copyright seem to present this hardship more as against the other genre of intellectual property; the reason being that works in these other aspects of intellectual property are not likely to be orphaned because of the requirement of registration and shorter duration. An attempt is made at examining the legal framework of orphan works in Nigeria and Canada