GHAMRO Sues MTN, Tigo And Other Telcos For Using Intellectual Property Of Musicians Without Paying Royalties

GHAMRO’s crusade to recoup more royalties for musicians whenever their property is used seems to be gaining more steam as they organisation has sued the main telcos in Ghana.
MTN, Tigo, Vodafone et al are parties in a series of suits brought by the organisation, seeking for the companies to be compelled to pay for using musician’s intellectual properties in promoting their products.
The telcos offer colour ringtone services for which they charge their subscribers, as well as organise shows and other events and GHAMRO wants royalties paid whenever such occurs.
GHAMRO have filed four different suits at the commercial courts in Accra and according to their lawyer, they are making it into one suit to tackle all the issues in once case.
“In all cases, we are complaining about the use of our works used as caller tunes and the performance. Basically, the cases were in different courts and now we want them to be consolidated in one court so that the trial can take place in one court and the consolidation has been granted.” Opoku Adusei told Onua Fm.
“We want them to realise that the works of persons who are creative and genius for that reason those works should be rewarded when they are used.” he continued.
“We want them to realise that the use of musical works for their activities whether caller tunes, app application, performance in public, downloads etc. [have to be paid for]”
GHAMRO has gotten more stringent on the issue of royalties in recent times – announcing new measures to recover more royalties, including the controversial measure targeting churches.