Acorn & Mustard

The Nigeria Startup Act was recently passed by the National Assembly and is assented to by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria today, 19 October 2022. As a legal mechanism for supporting the Nigerian tech industry, the Act contains some laudable provisions that could change the way Nigerian startups do business and interact with regulators. Here are 5 notable things that every startup founder should know about the Nigeria Startup Act 1. STARTUP LABELLING The Startup Act provides incentives and benefits for 'labelled' startups and certain service providers. To enjoy the benefits under the Act, a company must apply —to the startup portal— to be labelled as a startup. Only companies (and other business entities) that meet the following requirements will be granted the startup label: a registered company (or a partnership/sole proprietorship) that has not existed for more than 10 years; a company that carries out an endeavour that has to do with a digital technology pr...

  Why is Succession Planning Important Chadwick Boseman, who played the role of the Black Panther–King T'challa–is one of Marvel’s most iconic characters and, I dare say, the most charismatic King in the Marvel universe. He embodied the role and got the entire world crossing arms to say “Wakanda forever”. Unfortunately, his promising career was cut short by colon cancer in 2020 and this left the whole world in shock. Recently, it was  reported  that Chadwick Boseman's estate lost over $900,000 to legal and other fees due to the dispute over his inheritance. This happened because Chadwick Boseman died without leaving a Will–essentially, dying intestate. As a result of dying intestate, his wife and parents went to court to contend for entitlement to his estate which was originally worth about $3.8 million. Parties settled amicably and the sum of $2.3 million that was left after legal and other fees, including inheritance taxes, was shared equally between his wife and his pa...

  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 t...