Additional Ground I
The Court of Appeal erred in not setting aside the damages of US$ 75,000
based on speculated sales of the appellant book in and out of Ghana.
Additional Ground J
The Court of Appeal erred in not setting aside the award of damages, which is
unsupportable at law.
Additional Ground K
The Court of Appeal erred in not setting aside the costs awarded in the trial
court as manifestly excessive.”
The Law
It has been considered an axiom of copyright law, as applied in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and many other jurisdictions,
that copyright protects the expression of an idea, rather than the idea itself.
Thus, for instance, in Donoghue v Allied Newspapers Ltd. [1938] 1 Ch. 106 at p.
109, Farwell J said:
“This at any rate is clear beyond all question, that there is no copyright
in an idea, or in ideas. A person may have a brilliant idea for a story, or
for a picture, or for a play, and one which appears to him to be original;
but if he communicates that idea to an author or an artist or a
playwright, the production which is the result of the communication of
the idea to the author or the artist or the playwright is the copyright of
the person who has clothed the idea in form, whether by means of a
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