Burna Boy and Aristokrat Records have been charged to court

Last November, I tweeted and wrote a post about how Burna Boy and his management totally made a fool of themselves by using work which done by my brother's company Insecta Studios, without concluding negotiation and without paying for them.

Burna Boy @burnaboy, your fada. Una no wan pay for art work abi but una dey take am do full branding? You & your management.

E ti ji ya!

— Celestine (@celestocalculus) November 22, 2016

Yesterday, Insecta Studios officially charged Burna Boy and his musical outfit, Aristokrat records to court for copyright infringement and seeking for damages of 20 million Naira. Suit number FHC/CS/L/847/17 was filed at Federal High Court, Ikoyi and it also requires that Burna Boy and Aristokrat records publish a public apology, both on a national daily and across their social media platform.


Let me recap what happened for those who won't click the URL I posted above:
Burna boy reached out to my brother to create an artistic representation
 of him using a zombie concept for the back-drop of his performance at Essence Festival in South Africa, last year. They corresponded and agreed on what the concepts should be and feel like. After a few back and forth, a couple of sketched were sent through to his management for consideration. Then they stopped replying emails and WhatsApp messages. Then all of a sudden, we discover that Burna Boy took the sketches, blew it up and used it, without proper commissioning and without closing negotiations. Up till today, neither Burna Boy nor his management have paid a dime for it. Now click the link above and read the full story (with images).


Also you can follow the Insecta Studios The Cobweb series on YouTube to get more details of the happenings:

Why is this lawsuit important?
Two reasons:

1.
As the creative works grow and mature in several industries, it's important for creators to know that the works of their hands are valuable. Many times, people disrespect and disregard intellectual properties and use stuff created by others without proper consent, this is absolutely wrong. Creatives should know that they can go all out and take the people to court, to make them pay. One of the important pillars of growing economies is Intellectual Property Rights and people shouldn't be allowed to disregard it without recourse.

2.
If you're bold enough to disrespect us, know that we will be bold enough to fight you with resources available to us. And if the required resources aren't available, we'll acquire them. This is a personal message.