It appears that someone in the US has copyrighted the term “Nollywood”… Is that possible? Can we fight it? Must’ve happened this week.Implication is not immediately deadly: but it means we can no longer run ads for that term on Google… But I do wonder: who would copyright the term Nollywood? And why? Adi — Iroko Head of Growth — 26th June 2015
We heard about this early in 2014, like everyone was somewhat surprised and shocked. Can we fight it? We could. Would probably cost us $250,000+ in legal fees and 2–5 years of our lives. We probably should fight it. But we won’t. If this was 2012, when I naively considered myself a ‘champion of the industry’ and cash just entered pocket, I would have gone old testament and tried to resolve this situation myself. Back in 2012 we fought for 2 long years the #1 pirated website for Nollywood movies online. It took lawyers and depositions in Philadelphia, New York and San Francisco. It took private investigators across the states and to Accra tr...