10. The Current Situations of Copyright and Neighboring Rights in Ethiopia

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June 29, 2023

Copyright is a legal concept that offers protection to those who create and are owners of original works of art, music, literature, and software. They are granted sole authority over all uses, distribution and financial gains of their works. This implies that they have the authority to decide who can use their creations, how and for what purposes. The origin of copyright laws can be traced back to ancient civilizations, where the concept of intellectual property was recognized and protected.

The Current Situations of Copyright and Neighboring Rights in Ethiopia

Developed countries like Britain and America have well established and advanced coyright and othe intellectual proeperty systems. This is because, the history of the sectors started before 17th century. For example, the modern copyright law that gives exclusive rights to writers and publishers of England was passed in 1710 by the name of the Statue of Anne. Consequently, The Copyright Act of Umited States proclaimed in 1790 as the big departure after declaration of the copyright act of England. The experience spread to other nations as well. However, copyright laws were coordinated at an international level up in the 19th century.

The copyright industry is one of the major industries that are referred to as the core of economic growth. Studies show that this sector is a particularly fast-growing industry. It earns more foreign exchange than chemicals and related products, food and livestock, vehicles and car spare parts, aircraft and related spare parts. Globally, more than two trillion USD exchanged by copyright and neighbouring rights and other interdependent industries.
For example, The core copyright industries employed nearly 5.7 million workers in 2017, accounting for 3.85% of the entire U.S. workforce, and 4.54% of total private employment in the United States and the total copyright industries employed over 11.6 million workers in 2017, accounting for 7.87% of all U.S. employment, or 9.28% of all private employment in the United States. Similarly, about 300 million USD can produce only by film industry of Nigeria and the whole creative industries engaged about 2.7 million workforce. Study that was commissioned by WIPO and EIPO in 2014, the copyright and neighbouring right industries contribute about 24 billion birr and creates 240 thousands job opportunities.

Many countries understand the economic and social values of copyright and neighbouring rights and provide the indispensible support. Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States are some of the countries that support the sectors. When we look at the copyright industry of our country, it is a sector that has been achieving better growth levels in the last twenty-five years, though many challenges have been faced in terms of making the best use of the good capabilities and opportunities that exist in the sector.

The main obstacles of the copyright and neighboring sectors, before 2004, were the lack of a legal framework to protect the rights of creators on their creative works. In 2004, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia declared the copyright and neighboring rights protection Proclamation No. 410/2004 for achieving the the role of literary, artistic, and similar creative works for enhancing the cultural, social, economic, scientific and technological development of the country and improve the productivity of creative works.

Following the issuance of the proclamation, the owners of the rights, the government offices and other concerned bodies doing a lot of activities and campaign to stop the illegal copying and distribution of art works by CDs, VCDs, DVDs without the permission of the copyright holders. Efforts have also been made to take legal action against entities that have been doing illegal activities for centuries by duplicating and distributing flash, memory, and other technological products based on the legal grants of the proclamation.

On the other hand, since the sector is very vulnerable to modern technology and the violations of rights are becoming more and more sophisticated, the government and rights holders made a joint effort to reform the law in 2014 to establish a system to prevent these violations and illegal activities.
Proclamation No. 410/1996 on Protection of copyright and neighboring rights was amended by Proclamation No. 872/2014 issued in 2014. Based on the amended law, all stakeholders have been making several efforts since the day after the law was amended to establish the "Ethiopian Copyright and Neighboring Rights Collective Management Society" on believing that the association increase the effort of the right holders to protect their rights. Therefore, the Ethiopian Copyright and Neighboring rights Collective Management Society established on June 18/2016 based on the amended law of the proclamation article (32).

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