Insights · · By Soel Ngaba
What you need to know about copyright in Cameroon
Unlike industrial property, copyright is a national right in each OAPI member State. Annex VII of the OAPI code nevertheless sets a minimum frame aligned with international standards.
In Cameroon the text is Act No. 2000/011 of 19 December 2000. It protects literary and artistic works that are tangible and original: books, drawings, photographs, music, choreography — and computer programs. Software, games, applications and websites, as sets of source code and graphic elements, are works.
How is protection obtained?
There is no constitutive filing, unlike a patent or a trade mark. The work is protected by the mere fact of creation. Authorship still has to be proved — by any means, including a declaration to a collective-management organisation.
Cameroonian societies include SCAAP, SOCADAP, SOCILADRA, SONACAM and SCDV.
If you are not the author but the commissioner, it is ownership that must be proved: hence the need for a written assignment (logos, graphics, websites).
What the right allows
- To reproduce the work (photography, print, recording, and so on).
- To communicate it, including electronically, so that each person may access it at a time and place of their choosing.
- To sell or rent it.
Term of the economic rights: the author’s life and 50 years from the end of the calendar year of death.
Limits include press information, teaching, parody, the family circle; evidence in proceedings; and Braille adaptation.
Moral rights — authorship and integrity — are inalienable and perpetual.
Infringement
Imprisonment of five to ten years and/or a fine of CFA 500,000 to 10,000,000. Technical protection measures; an infringement seizure, then an action before the competent court.
Team EKEME LYSAGHT