WIPO Mission Assures Nigerian Musicians Of World Wide Royalty Collection Henceforth

A technical mission of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Geneva based United Nations agency for intellectual property issues around the world, has assured Nigerian musicians of world-wide royalty collection and distribution henceforth using the technology which WIPO has just installed at Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON).

This assurance was made by Mr. Simon Ouedraogo, WIPO Senior Advisor, Cultural and Creative Industries Sector during a joint press briefing at the Ikeja corporate headquarters of COSON, the nation's sole approved collective management organization for musical works and sound recordings. At the briefing on Thursday, March 29 to mark the end of the weeklong WIPO technical mission to Nigeria, were Mr. Boukary Sawadogo, WIPO IT Consultant; Chief Tony Okoroji, COSON Chairman; Mr. Chris Nkwocha, Lagos Zonal Manager of the Nigerian Copyright Commission and Mr. Chinedu Chukwuji, COSON General Manager.

At the briefing, Mr. Ouedraogo observed that Nigerian musicians may have lost huge amounts of money as many of their works exploited internationally have not been listed in the key international databases without which their royalties cannot be tracked and paid. Noting that as a result of their mission, the situation has changed dramatically, Mr. Ouederago said, "At the end of this exercise, COSON would be able to use WIPOCOS international database connection tool to work and to locate its members throughout the world in the International Interested Parties (IPI) database, as well as the International Musical Works Database (WID). The ultimate achievement is that Nigerian musicians would now have the right and the possibility to feature in IPI which is used worldwide, to be recognized as COSON members and to receive royalties accruing to them from all over the world".

Mr. Ouedraogo also announced that the WIPO experts have installed the newest version of WIPOCOS, called WIPOCOS Prime, a more powerful operating system which will facilitate the work of the COSON staff and enable COSON henceforth to fully generate its distribution according to international standards and norms. Furthermore, he said that the mission undertook the training of COSON staff and technical personnel in the use of international data transfer which will enable COSON members to be part of and included in the international database and the data sharing system.

Mr. Ouedraogo further announced that WIPO is spearheading a project to build a common database and data exchange system for all the West African CMOs, through the West African Copyright Network (WAN). He said that COSON is expected to play a pivotal role as a driving force within the region to achieve this objective, and beyond. According to him, WIPO's aim is to connect the WAN CMOs into the International Music Registry (IMR), a global database and licensing system for the 21st century, which WIPO would soon launch. Mr. Ouedraogo also said that WIPO has noted the driving force which the COSON Chairman, Chief Tony Okoroji, has become in championing the creation and the implementation of the West African Copyright Network of CMOs (WAN) which will further take the region as a whole to the level of the CMOs of the developed countries.

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