N1.3 billion lawsuit: COSON intensifies copyright war with Izamoje, Brila FM

The copyright war involving COSON and Dr. Larry Izamoje, Chairman, Brila Broadcasting Services has taken a new dimension.

In fact, just a few days ago, the latter published a press release where he announced the filing of an action in court against Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) for defamation. The purported defamation according to Izamoje was contained in a press release issued by COSON announcing the 1.3 Billion Naira copyright infringement suit it filed against Brila Broadcasting Services and Larry Izamoje.

The action by Izamoje may have backfired because less than forty eight hours after Izamoje’s announcement, renowned COSON lawyer, Mr. Justin Ige wrote to Dr. Izamoje giving him five days to retract part of the statement published by him or face fresh legal action. The following is the text of Mr. Ige’s letter to Larry Izamoje:

‘We refer to the press release issued by you with the above caption, published on your website, www.brilafm.net and several other websites wherein you made statements to the effect that our Client arbitrarily and unilaterally imposes royalty fees on broadcast stations.

‘By this publication you have falsely represented our Client as unreasonable and disorganized, unfair and unjust, dubious and manipulative in its determination of license fees payable by broadcast organizations. You made this false and injurious publication knowing the truth to be that the tariff of our Client is approved by the government regulatory agency, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), and that broadcast organizations that have been licensed by our Client paid negotiated fees. You are also aware that our client cannot impose royalty fees on anyone since by the provisions of the Copyright (Collective Management Organization) Regulations 2007 issued by the NCC, anyone in disagreement with any royalties demanded by our client may request the NCC to set up a panel to review such a demand and the decision of the panel is binding. 

‘It is clear that you made this publication with a malicious intent to damage the hard earned reputation of our client in retaliation for the copyright infringement suit our Client filed against you and Brila Broadcasting Services Ltd. By the referenced false publication, you have gravely injured our Client and lowered its estimation in the eyes of right thinking members of society.

‘We have the instruction of our Client to demand from you an immediate retraction of the false and malicious statement and an unreserved apology to be published in at least two national dailies for five consecutive days, and the sum of N10, 000, 000. 00 (Ten Million Naira) only, being compensation for the injury you have caused our Client. If you fail, refuse or neglect to meet the foregoing demands within 5 (Five) days of service of this letter on you, we shall perfect our Client’s instructions by instituting a fresh legal action against you’.

Reacting to recent developments, the COSON General Manager, Chinedu Chukwuji said, “The decision of our Board is clear. Anyone who throws COSON one blow will receive five blows.”

Mr. Omorogbe, CEO of Nowmuzik and manager of several top Nigerian artistes such as 2Face Idibia, J. Martins, Sheyi Shay, Tunde & Wunmi Obe, Sunny Neji, etc., had earlier said: “those who are ready to work with COSON will find out that we are very reasonable and friendly. I however assure those who want a fight that they will badly regret the day they decided to engage COSON in a fight.”

COSON Board member, Azeezat Allen said, ‘the Board has identified some in the broadcast industry who believe that they can employ divide and rule tactics and break the unity of the music industry. They obviously do not understand that this is a revolution. COSON has revealed to Nigerian musicians what is possible. The rapid growth of COSON has shown that we can successfully run a positive, professional, transparent and accountable organization in our industry. I know some musicians who have received over a million naira each as royalty from COSON in the last six months. Before COSON, they were getting nothing. This is therefore personal. Nobody wants to go back to the days of old. Those who may have decided to fight COSON surely miscalculated.”