A high court has granted an injunction filed by Primetime Limited to stop a play titled “National Science and Maths Quiz” which was expected to be staged at the National Theatre on Saturday.
Primetime Limited, who are the producers of the annual quiz competition held between second cycle schools in the country, sued the studio behind the play, Nyansapo, arguing that the company had not sought permission to use the brand name in their production.
This year’s National Science and Maths Quiz was widely regarded as one of the best in the competition’s history.
Eventually won by Prempeh College, the competition captured the attention of Ghanaians who followed each contest keenly and trooped to the National Theatre for the final.
The competition was also a huge draw on social media where debates between current and former students of the competing schools raged on for months.
The production company had looked to capitalise on the competition’s popularity with Saturday’s play.
However, speaking to Citi News after the presiding judge, Justice Patience Mills-Tetteh granted the injunction, the Managing Director of Primetime Limited, Nana Akua Ankomah-Asare, said the company would have risked hurting the image of the competition by allowing the unauthorised use of the brand name.
According to her the production company could have sought permission from the company to stage the play and a compromise could have been reached on the content to protect the image of the competition
“We want to protect our brand. First of all, this production was done without our authorization, without our consent and without our knowledge so we don’t know what exactly the whole play is about, we haven’t seen the plot. If you are going to be using somebody’s brand name you need to ask permission. The person is definitely going to make some inputs to make sure their interests are protected. When you don’t do that, there’s an infringement on the person’s intellectual property rights,” she said.
“The other side is that it’s also about the reputation of the brand. It’s about the goodwill that the brand has in the public sphere because once some damage is done to the brand’s reputation, it will take forever for the brand to recover. And in some cases, they don’t.”
Primetime Limited had, earlier in the day issued a statement saying that they would “never tolerate or condone any attempts, however well-intentioned, to deride or discourage any participant or school from being part of this noble joint effort to improve the quality of STEM education in Ghana.”
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
