commenced at the Commercial Division of the High Court, Accra, on 10th November
2005, claimed that, following a meeting of the Directors of the Ghana Education
Service (“GES”) on the literature component of the Basic School English Language
examination, it was decided that Junior Secondary School I pupils should be
examined for prose in, inter alia, the respondent’s novel. A recommendation was
therefore made that 450,000 copies of the respondent’s novel at a unit cost of
20,000 cedis be ordered. The respondent’s grievance was that the appellant had
published a work entitled “Gateway to English for Junior Secondary Schools Pupil’s
Book 3”, (hereinafter referred to as “Gateway”) which included, as Appendix 6, a
summary of the respondent’s novel. The respondent averred that by including his
work as Appendix 6 in its publication, the appellant had in effect rendered the
recommendation by the GES to purchase 450,000 copies of his novel nugatory and
therefore caused him great loss and damage.
Originally the respondent had brought action against the six authors of “Gateway”,
in addition to the appellant publisher and its local representative in Ghana. He
discontinued the action against the authors, by a notice of withdrawal of suit filed on
16th February 2006, whilst the learned trial judge, subject to certain orders she
made, dismissed the action against the local representative in her judgment after
trial. The parties to the appeal before us are therefore the respondent author of
“Woes” and the appellant publisher of “Gateway”.
The remedies claimed by the
respondent in his amended Statement of Claim filed on 25th November, 2008 were:
a) “An injunction to restrain the Defendants from doing as regards the 1st, 2nd,
3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th Defendants by themselves or by their servants or agents or any
of them or otherwise howsoever and as regards the 7th and 8th Defendants,
whether by their directors, officers, servants or agents or any of them or
otherwise howsoever, the following acts or any of them, that is to say:
copying without the licence of the Plaintiff the work entitled “Gateway to
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