–The world you need to know

LIVING through your ideas and skills has rules that must be followed with strict awareness of what are the dark realities in our world. Recently, an intellectual property rights case was concluded in our courts; all of the individuals are known to me. There’s an assumption that since we don’t have copyright laws, procedures of ownership can be ignored when it comes to matters that go beyond purchasing a car, or a house, or a piece of land. Where a receipt is exchanged for a purchase in your name, in most cases with IPR issues, ignorance prevails towards devastation.

Well, everything is just not really inside of our usual Guyanese habit of assuming what it is, and what it’s not. The reality is how you do things is crucial in the world of ideas. When an idea takes shape in a flash of realisation, or, for want of a better term, a surge of inspiration, how we deal with it must be controlled by a brisk tug, with a whisper imploring you to “manage this idea”. At times we do feel the euphoria to discuss a dream thing with ‘friends’. In fact, not all the so-called friends can be trusted with secrets, and in the legal world, where the ownership of ideas is concerned, your narrative of your idea between friends lies in the public domain. This means that anyone can appropriate and covet it, because, at the gaff level, it’s intangible. It becomes tangible when you put your idea, quietly, in writing, and send it to yourself as a registered mail, or go through the Herculean task of writing and building the book, illustrating the jewellery designs, doing the sketches for the children’s book, raising the funds to employ a professional artist to perform a ‘work-for-hire’ performance contract to capture your ideas.

I am not sure if the Commercial Registry can file something like your manuscript or sketches, but they should. Avoid institutions that tell you to send your unprotected ideas with promises, because, to see your work stolen can ‘trip’ your mind, at times permanently, from the normalcy you were born with.

Take this reference, in July 2019 in Japan, Shinji Aoba set fire to the KYOTO animation studio. This fire claimed 33 lives, all in their 20s and 30s; 22 women and 14 men. KyoAni artists are known for their creative work. Shinji was arrested, but claimed that the studio had plagiarised a novel of his. There were allegations that he was mad; was in medical care for mental health, and had a criminal record. But there was no direct evidence that his allegation was a fantasy, because, when the studio burned, with it was lost all the digital and other intellectual records.

An editor’s note of News, concluded, “It goes without saying that arson and murder are no solution to the idea of theft. However, assuming that initial reports of Aoba’s motives are correct, it goes to show how passionately creators of intellectual property feel about their works.”

The most brutal intellectual property exploitation arena is the music industry. Contracts are complex and compelling documents; it’s far from humour with the saying that ‘contracts can be the Devil’s covenant’. Before the contract should be a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that indicates intent, then the contract.

I’m no lawyer, but I had to learn from the beginnings of my career as a writer and artist to understand the priorities of survival in the enterprise area that nature had endowed me with. I prayed and spoke to the Kingdom of God within me. Without humour, I was directed by encounters to read more and to recognise how I, too, can be a victim through trade books and related experiences from other creative and talented people.

Just as I’m outlining what I’ve learnt, so was I advised by more experienced persons. While working in training with the late Dr. Denis Williams, I learnt a lot about the business of the arts and humanities, especially knowing that it is important to know how to balance and manage your content.

In closing, we all need inspiration from the Internet, magazines and old pictures, but the safest models are the models you recruit. They cost money. Beware of smart language you find in old books; don’t think that you can use it because you assume that everyone who read it is now dead. Remember that plagiarised content is always a no-no when you don’t use it as a quotation, and state the author’s name as reference but rather as yours. At all costs, avoid the burden of being discredited. It doesn’t go away easily; it can become as old people seh, ‘a Dokku pon yuh back’.