Prof Adebambo Adewopo is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and one of the country’s foremost authorities on Intellectual Property (IP) law. He has spent nearly four decades shaping the field across academia, public service and legal practice. A pioneer of IP scholarship at Lagos State University and former Director-General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), he currently serves as a professor of IP at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS). In this interview with ROTIMI AGBOLUAJE, Adewopo argued that recent reforms, including the Copyright Act 2022 and the National Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy (NIPPS) 2025, are insufficient to drive the necessary changes, calling for a comprehensive overhaul of Nigeria’s IP law and its institutional framework.
You pioneered the teaching and research of Intellectual Property (IP) law in Nigeria. What was the state of IP scholarship when you began, and how has it evolved?
For a long time, there were just a handful of IP scholars in the country. In recent times, the situation has rapidly changed. In the age of specialities, we now have an impressive pool of scholars and practitioners in the field contributing to IP scholarship and policy making, and delivering specialised services across public and private sectors.
Has Nigeria fully embraced IP as a driver of economic growth, particularly using patents and trademarks as tools for industrialisation and economic competitiveness?
IP is the foundation of the knowledge economy as we know it today. Anywhere you see creativity and innovation, IP is right there – creating wealth, boosting innovation, generating revenue and jobs, and leading to economic growth. This is because creativity and innovation respond to incentive and IP provides that incentive. That is why current trends have witnessed the optimisation of IP legal and policy infrastructure among countries to spur economic growth and align with development imperatives. Nigeria cannot be an exception, especially given the abundant potential across both creative and innovation divides in the country and the need to harness them for development.
Nigeria is undergoing one of the most defining phases in its IP law and policy landscape. The IP ecosystem has long required major reforms, but this has been, for the most part, lacking, or at least protracted, due largely to a lack of prioritisation or recognition of the strategic role of IP as an instrument of development. There has been a compelling need to mainstream IP in successive national development policies. Recently, the enactment of the new Copyright Act 2022, followed by the Nigerian Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy 2025 (NIPPS), are two important developments for IP in Nigeria. Current momentum towards economic expansion and diversification is best reinforced by a comprehensive reform of IP regimes. While we have recognised this imperative, we have yet to carry it to its logical conclusion in a holistic legal, regulatory and institutional reform.
What structural bottlenecks are responsible for preventing many innovative ideas from translating to protected patents?
Translating innovative ideas and protecting them are two different things, nonetheless, related. Businesses, especially startups and SMEs, are just gradually awakening to the hidden wealth in their IP. Poor innovation environment, dearth of technical and specialised IP expertise, as well as weak enforcement, are the bane of the sector. Also, lax industry practices underplay robust IP asset management systems and protocols. In addition, there are weak institutional and regulatory capacities. Those sum up some of the structural bottlenecks. The entire IP system, comprising a network of key stakeholders and institutions, must be well organised and work efficiently to deliver optimally. For example, IP offices are not to be neglected because around the world, they are critical national institutions at the centre of economic growth and development, not just registries or depositories. They are important repositories of valuable information of social, cultural, economic and technological significance. Patent offices are custodians of patent information that speaks to the country’s inventiveness and determines national innovation indexes to gauge the depth of development.
Nigeria’s creative industries, like music, film, publishing, and software, have continued to battle piracy. What sustainable enforcement models should be adopted?
Not just in the creative industries but beyond. Piracy is a big elephant in the house. It has always been and will always be. It is a hydra-headed monster that continues to transform as markets and technologies change and erodes the gains of creativity, innovation and economic growth, requiring enforcement. We quite recognise that. From all indications, piracy has reached an alarming proportion and has remained one of the biggest saboteurs of the economy. Pirates have become lords of the marketplace.
Years ago, at the NCC, realising that the high level of piracy requires a high level of enforcement, we embarked on one of the most comprehensive and ambitious anti-piracy campaigns nationwide under the umbrella of Strategic Action Against Piracy (STRAP). The high level of piracy was matched by intensive enforcement across all the creative sectors – music, audiovisual, books, including software, name them. We were there, conducting raids on pirated CDs, DVDs, books, and more at notorious flashpoints all over the country to support the creative industry, which was then already experiencing promising growth dynamics and constant references in economic conversations. We are in the final vestiges of physical piracy, save for counterfeiting and other forms of IP violations. We complemented enforcement with regulatory instruments.
Today, with digital technologies and the rise of AI and online streaming platforms, it is a different ball game and the new enforcement model remains mainly digital. A more nuanced digital anti-piracy enforcement strategy and inter-agency collaboration are required. A strict application of the regulatory regime for digital content and technologies under the Copyright Act 2022 reflects global standards for confronting the new waves of digital and online piracy, and in this case, with the Cybercrimes Act and Nigerian Data Protection Act, providing an additional layer of legal and regulatory tools to combat this evil.
What structural reforms are still needed to strengthen Nigeria’s IP framework?
The reform will be complete with new Patents and Trademarks laws, building of institutional infrastructure and capacities to effectively and efficiently administer IP. Again, streamlining IP agencies and integrating IP in national development policies would be great. In addition, Nigeria must institutionalise and define the modalities for interagency collaboration because of the cross-cutting nature of IP spanning different development areas – law, trade, economy, health, science, technology, culture, agriculture, environment and more. Beyond the well-known narratives – the rise of Nollywood and tech hubs, Afrobeat renaissance, are net contributors to the creative and innovation sectors. Following the urgency of reforms, more practical and strategic tools such as developing innovation and IP asset management systems, IP commercialisation frameworks and financing instruments, and others at individual, corporate and organisational levels are gradually shaping existing IP architecture to support economic growth. These things need deliberate and focused action to define IP governance as an integral part of economic and development policies, and to ensure that IP is no longer at the fringes if we are to be an active participant in the global knowledge economy, not just always speaking of having the potential but actually reaping from IP.
How can regulatory agencies balance enforcement with the need to encourage creativity and innovation?
IP enforcement is key. I have alluded to this fact. First, enforcing the law is an important goal of the law for public order, public interest and the protection of private rights. Second, the dominant logic in IP protection is in enforcing IP rights. Third, with enforcement powers as a critical element of the NCC’s mandate and by that, the Commission is actually a law enforcement agency of the Government. Lastly, though, enforcing IP rights is the primary duty of the right owner, the government retains the power as a matter of public interest to enforce piracy and other forms of copyright violations, especially large-scale piracy that impacts the industry, public revenue or the economy.
How can Nigeria and other African countries better position themselves within the global IP system?
This essentially entails maintaining a pro-development approach, which involves striking a delicate balance between the adoption or adaptation of international and global norms and standards, on the one hand, and the need to protect local industries, foster innovation, and secure access to essential technologies and goods, on the other. Fortunately, that is the thrust of my Inaugural Lecture in 2012. That debate has not come to a full circle. Recent continental developments with Copyright Commission charges govts, others to promote reading cultureand the IPRs Protocol, among others, bear eloquent testimony to the growing profile of IP as a key driver of trade and development.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redefining creativity and invention. Who should own AI-generated works under Copyright law?
It is digital technology that has had by far the most transformative impact ever faced on the question of the dissemination of knowledge and information in human history. And now, AI, its present manifestation, is fundamentally redefining creativity, innovation and IP and challenging traditional legal definitions of authorship and ownership, even so, the foundational principles of IP law, which were originally designed for human creators. Whether as AI-generated or AI-assisted for creating outputs and inventing new products, it has transitioned from a tool to an active collaborator and co-creator. Today, AI is everything and all around us, with the currency of IP as the dominant legal framework for the governance of knowledge products.
How should the law respond to digital streaming, cross-border infringement and online piracy?
The current Copyright regime, for the first time, has addressed those issues and given the rise of online streaming, this has been long overdue. The Copyright Act devotes a whole two Parts and other provisions dealing with online piracy and online content and establishing the regulation of liability of intermediaries. Nigerian copyright is a late entrant in this legal solution and it becomes an acid test for Nigerian Copyright law and jurisprudence on the entire Internet economy and the adequacy or otherwise of the law governing the content industry and digital networks.
Are Nigeria’s IP laws ready for the digital economy and what reforms would you prioritise to modernise Nigeria’s IP legislation?
It is safe to say that we are just in the middle of the process. We have come a long way and I think we are gradually getting ready, although it has been rather slow due largely to systemic challenges and lack of prioritisation of IP. Next steps should focus on completing the legal and institutional reform and building on the current momentum.
What were your most significant reforms as the former Director-General of NCC?
Building on the existing foundation, we embarked on quite several reform initiatives across the three broad areas of the Commission’s statutory mandate, which are the promotion, administration and enforcement, inclusive of regulation and prosecution of Copyright infringement in Nigeria. Each of those was fully packed and significant to the development of the largest creative and copyright-based industries in sub-Saharan Africa.
With the new Copyright Act, the mandate is even more extensive. The Commission itself, as an agency of government, needed repositioning for the renewed journey at the time. We embarked on re-organisation; so, for example, separate from the Enforcement Department, we created the Regulatory Department and Prosecution Department. We established our knowledge arm, the Copyright Institute (now called the Copyright Academy), among other institutional changes. We took pride in our manpower and training, which formed critical parts of some of the successes recorded.
Our mission was clear. Under the strategic drive of the famous STRAP, which was anchored on three pillars, we enhanced public awareness, regulatory interventions and enforcement action in line with the mandate of the Commission. STRAP was, in fact, the face of our policy, regulatory, institutional and public engagement. For example, in the Collective Management Organisations (CMO) space, we revised the CMO Regulations. We commenced the review of the Copyright Act itself. As we were busy building capacities, we were equally engaged in deploying resources to advance the Commission’s mandate with the goal of making the Commission one of the well-respected agencies of government, even with lean resources because of the well-known funding challenges and in an area that was not that visible. We took copyright and piracy to the public arena. We gathered momentum with refreshing dynamism, as some would often say, a golden copyright era, laying the building blocks for future development of this important national resource. I honestly believe that Public Service ought to have the best manpower obtainable anywhere if we are talking about advancing public interest and serving the country. There is nothing more fulfilling and impactful than being a part of that.
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