Who owns the App? The Freelancer or the Start-up
What is Copyright and why is so important? Copyright is a type of intellectual property right that gives the owner the exclusive right to use, copy and distribute creative works. Protection of intellectual property rights is very crucial to any start-up’s success since the value of tech and entertainment start-ups is often based on how valuable their intellectual property is. Copyright -which is a category of intellectual property rights- protects original works of authors (i.e, software developers, songwriters, composers, producers, artists, etc.) that have been fixed in any definite medium of expression. For a work to be eligible for copyright protection, it must be in a tangible medium such as software codes, songs, movies and it cannot be abstract or an idea. In Nigeria, any work that qualifies for copyright protection belongs to its author. As a result, the freelancer who was hired to create an app actually owns the copyright to the codes used to create it, and the photographe