The Stingomania boss alleged that the full length of the movie was played on over 71 international routes of the airline, the video content and soundtracks were also played in their office, they uploaded a trailer and exhibited a poster of the movie on two of their websites including www.virgin-atlantic.com/ng; http://virginatlantic.mymovies.net; seatback@fly.virgin.com and the contents of the movie and particulars were
also published in their inflight magazines circulated across all routes, travel agencies and inflight.
Justice Adah of the Federal High Court sitting at the Ikeja Judicial Division, Alausa, Lagos, only this morning granted an exparte order restraining the Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd whether by themselves, agents, privies, management, directors, pilots, flight crew etc from infringing or continuing to infringe the copyright in any audio, performance, soundtrack, cinematograph rights and audio-visual musical recordings of the plaintiff, Ope Banwo, as well as his literary rights particularly as contained in his work being the movie titled ‘’Ghetto Dreamz’’ as particularly described in the schedule to the application on the Defendants international air fleet as presently aired in – flight, as published in Seat-Back Magazine and websites pending the determination of the Motion on Notice for interlocutory injunction.
Mr Banwo sued for N1, 000, 000, 000 (One billion) as compensation; N5, 000, 000 (Five Million Naira Only) as the cost of prosecution while he also requested for the court to mandate the Defendants to publish apologies in three national newspapers, on the Defendants’ websites and in their iflight magazine. The court has granted the exparte order while the matter is adjourned to the 12th of March, 2012.
The movie starred the likes of Doris Simeon, Jaywon, Pa Kasumu, Trbsyon Dudukoko and a host of others. It was released in April 2011 which coincided with the month of Dagrin’s death which was April 22.
Well, it is about time somebody takes on these giant companies who will like to trample on the rights of our movie and music stars simply becos they are afraid to fight them. If indeed they broadcast the movie without proper permission they should pay and serve as example to others
ReplyDeletena wa o. Virgin should know better than to mess around with an attorney's material....People have been getting away with this for too long.
ReplyDeleteChei!!!!
ReplyDeleteVirgin Atlantic don fumble . . .they sure will have to pay big time for this, even if they try to settle this out of court, they will have to shell 100's of millions of Naira to Stingomania.
Why do these Oyinbos think they can continue to take us for granted anyways? Its time to OCCUPY VIRGIN ATLANTIC until they pay . . .its more annoying that even the movie is still on their schedule http://virginatlantic.mymovies.net/?s=2&p=2
or would they say they have not been served the exparte order?
Virgin Atlantic should know better than to screen a movie like this with national attention without getting proper documentation from movie owner. It shows the kind of lack of respect these foreign companies have for Nigerian artistes who are satisfied with selling their movie rights for peanuts.
ReplyDeleteThey would NEVER have tried this nonsense with a foreign movie because they know they will be sued for everything they have but they probably think Nigerian judges can be corrupted as usual or that they can offer the person a few dollars to keep quiet. We will be watching this closely to see what happens since many artiste's works are being trampled upon everywhere with impunity in this country. No wonder many of our big stars have nothing to show for their artistic skills.