Intellectual Property (IP) is a genre of Property, albeit an intangible or non-tangible property. Thus like any other property, IP products may be transmitted assignment, testamentary disposition, or by operation of Law. This position was upheld by the Court in

 Digital Communication Network (Nig) Ltd v. Ncc

 when the court held copyright, an IP Right to be so transmissible:

…Copyright is transmissible by assignment, testamentary disposition or by operation of law, as movable property under Section 11(1) and (2) of the Act(supra). Subsections 11(3) and (a) of the Act provides as follows: "(3) No assignment of copyright and no exclusive licence to do an act, the doing of which is controlled by copyright, shall have effect unless it is in writing. (4) Anon-exclusive licence to do an act, the doing of which is controlled by copyright, may be written or oral, or may be inferred from conduct.

The Law relating to Intellectual property is thus the legal regime that protects the products of one's intellect, mind, thoughts or reasoning. As is to be expected, the robust legal regime related to the protection of Intellectual Property as well as Intellectual Property Rights is a result of years and years of steady development of knowledge in that regard. The earliest action taken by a state to protect Intellectual Property is said to have occurred in 500 BCE when the Greek city state, Sybaris, granted her citizens the right to obtain a one-year patent for creating new luxurious items. In Medieval Europe, as trade became the driving force of the economy, trade associations of merchants and artisans arose, these associations grew to obtain power from the city-states to promote the conduct of commerce. Thus, the power to evolve new innovations in the making of goods and services became significantly the duty of the guilds.

The year 1623, saw the first pivotal move towards modern Intellectual Property Law when the English Parliament passed the ‘Stature of Monopolies’ which granted the “true and first inventor” 14 years’ window period of exclusive control over any invention he had made. The Parliament followed this with the Stature of Anne, under which inventors were granted the possibility of a 14-year renewal of the right of exclusive control over their invention, provided they satisfied the stipulated conditions.

Intellectual Property Law grew exponentially in the 1800s as it gained wider protections in Europe. This is seen clearly in the legislations that ensued from Europe, some of these include:

The Paris Convention of 1883 which granted inventors the right to protect their invention in whatever country they were being used.

The Berne Convention of 1886, which granted writers protection as regards all forms of written content, as well as musical compositions, drawings, artwork and so on internationally.

The Madrid Agreement of 1891, which provided for a wider protection for trademarks.

The United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property of 1893,which was the combination of the Paris and Berne Conventions.

In Nigeria, the history of the development of intellectual Property Law can be discussed under three distinct epochs. The first is the pre-colonial era, in which era, intellectual acumen of the people found expression through various cultural and traditional practices such as folk songs, sculptures, pottery, paintings, designs, marks, textiles, scarification, traditional medical and herbal methods and so on. Whether these IP products(IPP) were so recognised and protected remains debatable. Although it is argued in favour of this notion that owing to the recognition granted some forebears in traditional oral renditions like in music, it is reflective of some sort of protection. The second is the colonial era which saw the reception of the English Common Law which was for all intents and purposes a formal legal order. This period is agreed to be the period in which a formal intellectual property legal regime was introduced in Nigeria. The third and final epoch is the post-colonial era, which period has been characterised by the steady growth of IPL in Nigeria, with the nation not only setting up a commission to oversee IP practice in Nigeria but also continually reviewing various Laws in the IP bundle to conform with international practices.

As has been shown, IPL development has spanned an appreciably long period of time but the relevance of IPL has never waned through the years. Rather, the importance thereof is becoming more and more pronounced as the economy of nations has shifted from product based to knowledge based economies.6 Though IPL keeps growing and therefore changing to suit the growing needs of the time through the ages, the core of the IPL has radically remained the same to wit – the protection of the rights of inventors, artists, and merchants with a view to encouraging the exchange of ideas and reward for people’s creativity or intellectual ingenuity.

Intellectual Property Law Introductory Perspectives

Hire-purchase is one of the most common methods by which traders, dealers and manufacturers grant extended credit to their customers. This type of arrangement is viewed by lay men as a sort of contract of sale in which the price is paid by instalments. This is in spite of the fact that contracts of sale are different from contracts of hire-purchase.

The Factors Act, 1889 and the Sale of Goods Act, 1893 contain provisions which enabled a person who had bought or agreed to buy goods and who obtained with the consent of the owner possession of them to transfer valid title to them to an innocent purchaser for value.1 This situation caused great anxiety and hardship to sellers of goods who under such circumstances lost their ownership of the goods as well as their possession and all rights accruing to ownership or possession, for example to sue for their return or conversion or detinue as the case may be.

In addition, they may not have received the price for goods or if they did this might be after a considerable passage of time or protracted litigation. This was the situation in 

. In that case, A being in possession of some pieces of furniture under a purported hire- purchase agreement with the plaintiff sold and delivered same to the defendant before the last instalment had accrued or been paid. The defendant received the same in good faith and without knowledge of the plaintiff’s rights in respect of them. The Court of Appeal (English)held that the sale and delivery to the defendant were within the provisions of section 9 of the Factors Act, 1889 and therefore valid and the furniture could not be recovered by the original owner (the plaintiff). Hire-purchase, therefore, evolved to take care of such situations.

Two outstanding English decisions brought out the importance and advantage of an agreement based on hire-purchase. In 

 for instance, Helby, a dealer, delivered a piano to one Brewster on terms that Brewster would pay a monthly rent of 10shillings, 6 pence and that; 

After 36 payments, the piano would become Brewster’s property;

In the meantime, the property would remain in Helby;

Brewster could terminate the hiring at any time by returning the piano to the owner and stopping the payment of instalments.

After making a few payments, Brewster pledged the piano to a third party, Matthews, who took it in good faith and without notice of Helby’s rights. Helby tried to recover the piano from Matthews, and the question which had to be answered was whether Matthews had a good title to the piano. The House of Lords unanimously decided that the agreement between Helby and Brewster did not constitute an agreement for Brewster to buy within section 9 of the Factors Act, 1889. All that he undertook to do was to make monthly payments in instalments, although he had the option to buy the piano. If he had exercised the option, he would have become the purchaser of the piano instead of the hirer. The judicial stamp of approval thus given by the court to the practice of hire-purchase increased the popularity of the practice, both on the part of the owner and the hirer.

It is pertinent to note that the growth and development of hire-purchase has been slow in Nigeria due to the following reasons:

The system was unknown to customary law and was imported through the agency of the English common law;

The luxury goods which normally attract this form of commercial transaction for example motor vehicles, televisions, fridges; air conditioners, etc were rather slow incoming into the country in an appreciable quantity. Even when they did, the number of people who could afford to purchase them were few so that the system was unattractive to the potential hire-purchase investors or traders;

When the system became eventually known, the unscrupulous business practices of some hire-purchase investors or traders subjected it to abuses and deprived the customers of the comprehensive protection the law intended them to have which in turn made the system unattractive to potential customers. Particular abuse was a snatch back of goods by hiring companies for trivial defaults by the customers even though nearly all the instalments had been paid. The goods will be taken without any compensation to the hirer for the amount paid and thus a considerable profit would accrue to the hiring company;

There was a traditional belief of customers that once a person has paid a deposit in respect of the goods, the goods automatically become his. Thus, any system which does not respect the traditional belief or which militates against it should be rejected and indeed was rejected.

With education, however, the Nigerian customer began to realise and accept that the hire-purchase system affords him one of the easiest and inexpensive methods of secured financing or of developing trade transactions. By the early 60s, hire- purchase system was fully welcomed by investors and customers alike. It is governed by the English Common Law Rules and the Nigerian Hire-purchase Act, 1965 and now Cap H4, LFN, 2004 (the Act). The object of the Act was to protect hirers against some existing patent abuses in the hire-purchase system. Such abuses include the following:

 These misleading hire-purchase advertisements lured many innocent hirers into unexpected liabilities that far outweighed the anticipated benefits particularly in the UK. In a bid to check this, the British Parliament had to pass the Advertisement (Hire-purchase) Act, 1957and stringent and stiff conditions were placed on hire-purchase advertisements. The Nigerian Hire-purchase Act toed the same line. Though this problem of misleading advertisement was not notorious, it was not absent;

Extraction of Improvident Agreements from Hirers:

 Dubious dealers deceived hirers into signing the hire-purchase contracts and the payment of instalments without full explanation as to the termination of the payment by instalments. They were also not informed that ownership still vested in the owner until the payment of the last instalment. These hirers were shown the agreements to sign or thumb- print, and owners carefully incorporated clauses that obligated hirers to pay certain minimum sums and also to pay a certain fixed large sum of money, all liabilities on the part of the owner arising from a breach of warranties and conditions were removed, and conferred on the owners the right to forcefully enter the hirer’s compound and repossess the goods. Because these owners have protected themselves from liabilities, they now went on to supply goods of very low qualities to the hirer and they enjoyed it while it lasted;

Extortionate Enforcement of Terms by Owners (to Obtain by Force or Threat):

 On the issue of enforcement, owners became restless, ruthless, harsh and to say the least ‘Shylocks.’ Immediate repossession of goods became the order of the day on a tiny delay in the payment of instalment. The situation was seen clearly in 

 where the total sum was N2, 000.00. The hirer had paid N1,990.00, leaving a balance of N10. When this N10 fell due, the hirer could not pay. The owner seized the vehicle and sold it and was actually held to have acted rightly. Even where the owner had taken a legal action against the hirer, and beforecommencement, the hirer paid off the remaining instalment, the action would stillnot abate.

These problems precipitated the Hire-purchase Act, 1965 to curtail these excesses, among other issues. The Act has provisions covering the transactions that are regulated by it; restrictions are placed on the remedies for default by a customer.

The Law of Hire Purchase

Domestic violence or abuse is violence or other form of abuse by one person towards another in a domestic setting, such as in marriage or co-habitation. It can also be defined as an intentional and persistent abuse of anyone in the home in a way that causes pain, distress or injury. It refers to any abusive treatment of one family member by another, thus violating their basic human rights. The United Nations Centre for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs termed it as intimate partner violence when committed by a spouse or partner in an intimate relationship against the other spouse or partner, and can take place in heterosexual or same-sex relationships, or between former spouses or partners.

Principally, domestic violence involves violence against children, parents, or the elderly. It takes such forms as physical, verbal, emotional, economic, religious, reproductive and sexual abuse, ranging from subtle to coercive/violent forms. These include marital rape and violent physical abuse such as choking, beating, female genital mutilation, and acid throwing that results in disfigurement or death. Domestic violence is common in male dominated cultures as it is justified in customs and traditions, and condoned by law. Some of the domestic violence cases go unreported as women and children most often suffer in silence.

Domestic violence occurs globally. Families from all social, racial, and economic backgrounds experience domestic violence in different ways. It is thus reported that every year in the United States of America (USA), about 4.8 million women and children become victims of intimate partner related physical assaults and rape. In Asia as well, domestic violence is prevalent. For instance, 56% of Indian women surveyed by an agency justified beating of wife on grounds like bad cooking, disrespecting in-laws, producing more girls, among other reasons.

In Nigeria, several reports reveal high level of violence against women. Afrol News and Amnesty International report that a third and in most cases two-thirds of women are believed  to have been subjected to physical, sexual and psychological violence carried out primarily by husbands, partners and fathers while girls are often forced into early marriage and are at risk of punishment if they attempt to escape from their husbands. A staggering 97.2% of them do not report the crime to the Nigeria Police. They endure and sometimes die in silence, either based on the belief that the law will not protect them or from cultural and religious inhibitions.

It therefore implies that women are mostly at the receiving end of violence in the society. Against this background, the paper sets out to examine domestic violence with specific reference to women in Nigeria from economic perspective and the available legislation to halt the menace in Nigeria. The paper is divided into various sections; the introduction followed by domestic violence in Nigeria, economic dimensions, legal dimensions, conclusion and recommendations.

F.B MYIM & CO.

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