LEGISLATIVE PLAGIARISM: RESOLVING THE QUESTION OF THE COPYRIGHT STATUS OF A DRAFT BILL

Abstract

Legislation is one of the major sources of law in Nigeria and other countries of the world. Before a Bill is passed into law, it passes some specific processes laid down in the Constitution. Once a bill has passed through all the required stages it takes effect as a law/statute. Most countries of the world including Nigeria do not make a Statute subject of copyright. Thus, a Statute cannot be copyrighted. However, where a Bill has not succeeded in becoming a law or where such fails to pass through the legislature, the question now becomes; will such a Bill be subject of

Full text

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LEGISLATIVE PLAGIARISM: RESOLVING THE QUESTION OF THE
COPYRIGHT STATUS OF A DRAFT BILL
Nkem I. Itanyi*
Abstract
Legislation is one of the major sources of law in Nigeria and other
countries of the world. Before a Bill is passed into law, it passes some
specific processes laid down in the Constitution. Once a bill has passed
through all the required stages it takes effect as a law/statute. Most
countries of the world including Nigeria do not make a Statute subject of
copyright. Thus, a Statute cannot be copyrighted. However, where a Bill
has not succeeded in becoming a law or where such fails to pass through
the legislature, the question now becomes; will such a Bill be subject of
copyright and if yes, of whom? Resolving this question is the focal point of
this paper. This paper discusses the concept of copyright and works eligible
for copyright; legislative process of passing a Bill to become law and tries
to find the place of copyright in the legislative process. It is our submission
herein that the sponsor of a draft Bill is entitled to the copyright in the Bill.
Thus any recopying of the Bill or re-proposal of the Bill on the floor of the
Legislative House other than by the initial sponsor amounts to plagiarism
unless the first sponsor of the Bill assigned his right therein.
Keywords: Legislature, Bill, Statute, Plagiarism, Copyright, Intellectual Property.
Introduction
On the 2nd of December 2015, news reports had it that the Honourable Speaker of the House of
Representatives warned legislators of plagiarism in the House. This was sequel to a point of
order raised by the House leader, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila that legislators copy old Bills that
couldn’t scale through to be passed into law and simply substitute the names of the old sponsors
of the Bill with their names and re-propose the Bill on the floor of the House. This point of order
prompted the Speaker to warn the Legislators that such acts amount to plagiarism which is
punishable under the law. This caution of the Honourable Speaker of the House of
Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria prompted the research into this aspect of the
law of copyright.
* Mrs. Nkem Itanyi LL.B. (Ife), LL.M. (Lond.), B.L. Lecturer, Associate Dean, Faculty of Law, University of
Nigeria, Enugu Campus.

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According to Hon. Gbajabiamila, the trend has the potential of impacting negatively on the
legislative vibrancy of the members and the House at large. In his words:
There is a trend in this Assembly which is legislative plagiarism whereby
names of original authors of Bills and Motions were substituted and replaced
with their own. This is so bad that some went up to 5th Assembly to search for
past motions and Bills and that is why you see a legislator within four months
having 40 Bills. This is not done anywhere in the world because there is no way
quality legislation can be enhanced through that practice. Legislative work has
a lot to do with research and if you are researching into Bills, it is impossible to
come up with 40 Bills within four months… Even if you must pick other
people’s motions, at least acknowledge the original author of the Bill. It is my
opinion that we come up with original Bill and stop infringing on the
intellectual property of others. This trend must stop.
The Concept of Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property is an intangible right over the works of the intellect; or put in other words,
the right of an author or innovator over the creations of the mind. Property refers to “an exclusive
right to control an economic good…a concept that refers to the rights and obligations, privileges
and restriction that govern the relations of men with respect to things of value”.
1
Property is
typically divided into tangible/corporeal rights in physical objects on one hand, and
intangible/incorporeal rights in things covered by the intellect (not perceivable by any of the
senses). Vaines states that the term ‘property’ has three connotations. It may mean a thing
owned, may mean ownership itself or it may mean an interest in a thing less than ownership but
nevertheless conferring certain rights.
2
It follows therefore, that there is as much rights in
intangible as in physical objects. Thus, as there are property laws protecting tangible goods, so
also there are laws protecting intangible properties. Where there is a right over a property,
concomitantly, there will also be a right to protect that property and a right to enforce
infringement of the right over that property.
1
Encyclopaedia Britannica (Macropaedia) 15th edn. Vol. 15 p. 46
2
Vaines C., Personal Property (London: Butterworths, 1973) p.1

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Intellectual Property rights are private rights. One is not unmindful of the legal complexities
which have attended diverse attempts to put the subject of intellectual property law into a
definitive compartment.
3
In other words, the term intellectual property has refused to pigeonhole
itself into a definite definition. Black’s Law Dictionary
4
defines Intellectual Property as a
category of intangible rights protecting commercially valuable products of the human intellect.
In a similar vein, Osborne’s Concise Law Dictionary
5
defines Intellectual Property as a category
of intangible rights protecting commercially valuable products of the human intellect. Several
authors have also offered different definitions of intellectual property. Jennifer Davies refers to
intellectual property as “products of the mind”
6
; While John F. Williams sees it as “that body of
legal rights which arise from mental and artistic endeavour.”
7
Two ubiquitous terms that run
through all these definitions of Intellectual Property are ‘rights’ granted for protection of the
works of the ‘intellect’. Thus, Intellectual Property can be defined as bundle of intangible rights
granted by law for protection of works of the mind which has been transposed into a tangible
material perceivable by the human senses.
Intellectual Property rights are granted by statutes. Under Nigerian laws, four major intellectual
property rights are protected viz: Patents, Copyright, Industrial Design and Trademarks.
The rationale of intellectual property rights are to give the holder the exclusive right to use the
intellectual property and the power to prevent others from exploiting it without permission.
8
There are moral persuasions why the creator of an intellectual property should enjoy protection
over his intangible products of the mind. This is because, according to Lawrence Sterno “the
sweat of man’s brow and exudations of a man’s brains are as much a man’s property as the
breaches upon his backside.”
9
According to John Locke everyone has a property right in the
3
Ozioko M.V.C., “International Law and the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights – Present Realities and
Future Challenges” UNIZIK Law Journal Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 137 – 146 at p. 137.
4
Bryan Garner (ed.), Black’s Law Dictionary 8th edn., (St. Minn USA: Thomson West, 2004) p. 824.
5
Leslie Rutherford and Sheila Bone, 8th edn., (London: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd., 1998) p. 181
6
Jennifer Davies, Intellectual Property Law (London: Butterworths, 2001) p. 1.
7
John F. Williams, A Manager’s Guide to Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981) p. 8.
8
T .Y. Oloko and O.S. Oyekunle, “Real and Intellectual Property Transactions: Reflections on Common Threads”,
LASU Law Journal Vol. VI Issue 1 (2008) pp. 174 – 183 at p. 175.
9
Lawrence Sterno, ‘Shandy III’, C. 34 quoted in Gardiner 88 LQR

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labour of his own body and brain and that the application of the human intellect to an unowned
objective gives a property right in it.
10
Intellectual Property Rights’ protection becomes very important because of the overriding
economic benefits derived by those who are not usually the author or the inventors but are pirates
benefitting immensely from the inventor’s intellect.
11
Enormous mental energy is spent in
creating such an original work that brings it out as an extension of the creators personality
necessitating its protection from false attribution, distortion, or degrading treatment. This
protection provided as a statutory right in the realm of personal property is a chose in action.
The law gives protection to copyright owners with stiff penalties in the event of violation, yet
there is continued menace of intellectual property right infringements. Most of these rights are
enforced by the right holder except for copyright which can be enforced by the Nigeria
Copyright Commission.
Conceptual Clarification of Copyright
Copyright law is a universal concept and a form of protection for ideas created which is provided
by the laws of any sovereign State. Almost every nation has some form of copyright protection
laws for its authors and artists. Several important international treaties also deal with copyright
law among the nations.
A pedestrian approach to define this concept may end up defining it as the right to copy. In as
much as this definition sounds reasonable, to the informed minds, such a definition is merely
rhetorical and begs the question. It is noteworthy to state the fact that the term copyright has not
acquired any precise and composite definition. Even the Copyright Act
12
did not help matters as
it defines copyright to mean ‘copyright under this Act’. However, a combined reading of section
1 and 6 of the Copyright Act is to the effect that copyright is the exclusive right of the creator of
an original literary work, musical work, artistic work, cinematograph films, sound recording and
10
John Locke, The Second Treaties: s. 27 Two Treaties of Government” ed. By Peter (Cambridge University Press
1970.)
11
G.I Uloko, “A Critical Appraisal of the Remedies in Intellectual Property Litigations in Nigeria”, (2008) Nigerian
Journal of Public Law Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 267 – 273, at p. 267.
12
Cap C28 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004. .

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broadcast, to use the works and exclude other persons from exploiting the works without
permission.
The primary function of copyright law is to protect from annexation by other people the fruits of
a man’s work, labour, skill and taste. Thus, Article 27(2) of the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights 1948 provides that “everyone has the right to the protection of the
moral and material interest resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which
he is the author”. This protection is given by making it unlawful, as an “infringement of
copyright” to reproduce or copy any work without the consent of the owner of the copyright in
that work. As noted herein, it is the work that is protected and not ideas. If ideas can be taken
without copying a ‘work’, the copyright owner cannot interfere.
13
In Nigeria, copyright is
conferred automatically immediately a work is produced without the formality of registration.
Copyright is a legal term describing rights given to creators for their literary and artistic work. It
ordinarily means that the creator of the work alone has the right to make copies of his work for
himself and others. The author of a copyrighted work, being the owner, enjoys rights to produce,
to publish, to adopt, to translate and to perform it in public. The owner can also sell, assign,
licence or bequeath the copyright to another party if he wishes so. Therefore, copyright refers to
a body of exclusive rights to protect the works of authors and other creative persons against
copying or unauthorized public performance, which may be literary, musical, dramatic, motion,
picture, audio-visual work, sound recordings and computer programs.
14
Copyright does not
protect every work of authorship. To qualify for copyright protection; a work must be fixed and
original. The law considers a work to be fixed if it is recorded in some permanent format. To be
original, the work must not be copied from previously existing material and must display at least
a reasonable amount of creativity. In essence, copyright only protects the words, notes or images
that the creator has used. It does not protect any idea or concepts revealed by the work. In the
exact words of the Act, section 1 (2) of the Copyright Act
15
provides:
A literary, musical or artistic work shall not be eligible for copyright unless-
13
T. A. Blanco White et. al., Patents, Trademarks, Copyright and Industrial Designs 2nd edn., (London: Sweet and
Maxwell Ltd., 1978) p. 112
14
Section 1 of the Copyright Act (infra) listed works eligible for copyright and they are (a) literary works; (b)
musical works; (c) artistic works; (d) cinematograph films; (e) sound recordings; and (f) broadcasts.
15
Copyright Act Cap. C28 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004.

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(a) Sufficient effort has been expended on making the work to give it an original
character;
(b) The work has been fixed in any definite medium of expression now known or
later to be developed, from which it can be perceived, reproduced or otherwise
communicated either directly or with the aid of any machine or device.
Bringing the wide genres of copyright down to the scope of this paper, the focal point would be
on literary works as one of the works eligible for copyright. Rather than attempt a definition of
‘literary work’ Section 51 of the Copyright Act gives a non-exhaustive list. It provides:
“Literary work” includes, irrespective of literary quality, any of the following
works or works similar thereto-
(a) Novels, stories, and poetical works;
(b) Plays, stage directions, film scenarios and broadcasting scripts;
(c) Choreographic works;
(d) Computer programmes;
(e) Text-books, treaties, histories, biographies, essays and articles;
(f) Encyclopaedias, dictionaries, directories and anthologies;
(g) Letters, reports and memoranda;
(h) Lectures, addresses and sermons;
(i) Law reports, excluding decisions of courts;
(j) Written tables or compilations.
Since the list is not exhaustive and the court may, by reasonable extension, include works that
are not expressly mentioned, the potential scope of literary works is open.
16
It is noted that a statute or a draft bill is not listed as amongst works qualifying as literary works
to be entitled to protection under copyright.
Historically, prior to the enactment and coming into force of the Copyright Act No. 47 of 1988
which is currently compiled under Cap. C28 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, after some
amendments in 1992 and 1999, there have been in existence two older Copyright Acts in
Nigeria. The first Copyright Act 1911 was a direct consequence of the colonial era. Nigeria
16
J. O Asein, Nigerian Copyright Law and Practice 2nd edn. (Abuja Nigeria: Books & Garvel Publishing, 2012) p.
55

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continued to apply the English Act of 1911 until 1970 when the English Act of 1911 was
repealed by the Nigerian Copyright Decree.
Under the 1911 Act, statutes were not included in the definition of literary work. Under section
35 of the 1911 Act “literary work” includes maps, charts, plans, tables, and compilations. Under
the 1970 Act, section 19, “literary work” included … (g) law reports and enactments or other
written laws. Thus, under the 1970 Act, statutes were protected under copyright. ‘Author of a
literary work’ was not defined under the said Act. We however posit that the copyright of such
statutes will lie in the Legislative House. It then follows that the Legislature can enforce
unauthorized copying of the enactments by third parties other than those expressly permitted.
Also, by virtue of Schedule 1 to the Copyright Act 1970, the copyright in the enactment and
other written laws shall expire twenty five years after the year in which the author dies. This
provision in relation to enactments is inappropriate. As earlier mentioned, the author of an
enactment or other written laws is the Legislature which passed the law, and the law thereafter
becomes an Act of the National Assembly or a Law of the State House of Assembly. The
legislature does not ‘die’ and therefore to compute the 25 years will be a deadlock activity. Even
if it is argued that a legislature ‘dies’ at the end of a legislative tenure, it is still absurd to
calculate lifetime of copyright in a written law or enactment.
Presently under the 1988 Copyright Act, now Cap. C28 LFN 2004, written laws and statutes are
excluded as literary works eligible for copyright. Even the use of the catchment word “includes”
cannot bring ‘Statutes and written laws’ under the meaning of literary works. It therefore means
that there is no copyright in statutes. Under section 4 of the Copyright Act, copyright shall be
conferred on every work which is eligible for copyright and is made by or under the direction or
control of the Government, a State authority or a prescribed international body. The provisions of
this section also do not allow for the conferment of copyright on statutes. Therefore statues are
not eligible for copyright protection under our Act.
J.O Asein in his book posited as follows:
Some categories of works may be excluded by implication. For instance, it is
doubtful if copyright subsists in statutory enactments. The 1970 Act in section 19
(1) had defined “literary work” to include: “(g) Law reports and enactments or
other written laws.” The present definition of “literary work” in section 51(1)

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mentions law reports (excluding court decisions) but omits enactments and written
laws. This omission should be viewed as a deliberate departure from the old law,
implying that enactments and written laws are now excluded from the list of
materials qualifying as “literary works”.
17
This is in tandem with the position in most western nations. In the United States, judicial
decisions and statues are not copyrighted and are considered to be in the public domain. They
may be copied at will. According to the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, copyright protection is not
available for any work of the United States government.
It is now established that a statute which has passed through the legislative process of law
making and has come into force is not eligible for copyright. The question now is, whether a
proposed statute is eligible for copyright? This shall be analysed later in this work.
Plagiarism
According to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, to plagiarize means to: steal and pass off
(the ideas or words of another) as one’s own; to use (another’s production) without crediting the
source; to commit literary theft; to present as new and original an idea or product derived from
an existing source. In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud which involves both stealing
someone’s intellectual work and lying about it, by not crediting the source/owner.
Legislative Process of Enacting Laws
There is a laid down constitutional procedure for enacting a draft bill into a law. The process of
law making generally requires a long period of deliberation and consideration of the many
interests and implications of the bill. A bill is like a proposal or an idea that has to be deliberated
upon and passed into law by the National Assembly. The stages are briefly discussed hereunder.
The first stage is the identification of the need for a bill. This bill can be a new one, introducing a
new idea not yet covered by an existing law. It can also be an amendment to an existing law,
which is thought to be inadequate either because of some changes in the policies of the
government or changes in the society.
18
A bill can be initiated by anybody but only a Member of
17
J.O. Asein, op.cit. p. 57
18
Available at http://www.nassnig.org/page/the-legislative-process Accessed on 12/03/2016 by 10:20 pm.

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the House or a Senator can introduce it on the floor of the House or the Senate. Bills are grouped
into three categories: Executive, Member and Private Bills.
On the receipt of a bill, the Speaker forwards it to the Rules and Business Committee while the
Senate President sends it to the Committee on Rules and Procedure. These Committees then look
at the bill to determine whether it meets all the standards in draft and presentation. If not, the bill
will be forwarded to the Legal Department of the National Assembly for re-drafting and further
advice. After this; the Committee then sends the bill for gazetting and for subsequent stages:
first, second and third readings. All bills must receive three readings before they can be passed
into law and the readings must be on different days. Some bills can receive accelerated
consideration i.e. on the same day because of their urgency and significance for government
policy. In that case, rules of the House/Senate are to be suspended for easy passage.
On the day slated for a bill’s first reading, the clerk of the House/Senate reads the short title of
the bill and proceeds to ‘table it’. This simply means the ceremonial placing of the bill on the
table before the Speaker/Senate President. At this stage, there is no debate on the bill on the floor
of the Senate/House. Thereafter, the bill moves on to the stage of second reading. This entails
debate on the bill. This commences with the sponsor of the bill moving a motion that the bill be
read a second time. Usually in moving this motion, he is expected to highlight the objectives,
general principles and subject matter of the bill. He can also go on to state the benefits of the bill
if passed into law. This motion to read the bill a second time must be seconded by another
member of the House/Senate if not, the bill will be rejected. If the House agrees on the motion,
the clerk will thereafter read the long title of the bill and debates can then commence on the bill.
After debating on the bill, if the bill gets the support of the majority of the members, it moves on
to the next stage – committee stage. Failure to muster the required support will ‘negative’ (‘kill’)
the bill and it cannot be debated on any more unless re-introduced at a later date.
The next stage is where the Speaker/President of the Senate refers the bill to the appropriate
standing committee(s) to examine the bill critically. At this committee stage, all aspects of the
bill is considered clause-by-clause and point-by-point. The relevant committee will organize
public hearings of relevant stakeholders on the bill. At this stage, members of the committee may
introduce or propose amendments to the bill. Initial clauses in the bill may be deleted and

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replaced with new amendments. The amendments are not to change the essence of the bill. At the
conclusion of the committee work, a report will be made to the whole House/Senate in plenary.
The next stage is the third reading. After the report to the whole House, a motion may be moved
that the bill be read the third time. Normally, at this stage no further amendments are entertained.
However, if a member wishes to introduce an amendment in the bill, he/she must give notice
‘that the bill be re-committed’ before the motion for third reading is moved. If the motion for‘re-
committee’ is agreed on, the bill will revert to the committee or the House/Senate will dissolve
into a committee of a whole and reconsider the bill. After all necessary amendments, the
House/Senate will then proceed on the third reading and pass the bill. Nigeria practises a system
of bi-cameral legislature at the federal level. Thus, after passing the bill by one house, a clean
copy of same is sent to the other House for concurrence.
In the event that the other Chamber disagrees with certain provisions of the bill (now passed by
one House) then, a Conference Committee of the two chambers will be constituted to work out
any disagreement. The report of the Joint Conference Committee is presented in both Chambers
for consideration. If both Chambers adopt the report, all the original papers are sent to the Clerk
of the Chamber where the bill originated. The Clerk puts together all the amendments and
produces a clean copy of the bill which is sent to the Clerk of the National Assembly who then
sends it to President for his signature. A bill does not become law until the President signs it.
However, the National Assembly is empowered by the Constitution to overrule the veto of the
President. If, after 30 days, the President refuses to sign the bill and the National Assembly is not
in support of the President's review, the two Chambers can recall the bill and re-pass it. If the bill
is passed in the form it was sent to the President by two-third majority vote in both Chambers,
the bill automatically becomes a law even without the signature of the President.
Copyright Status of a Draft Bill
The end product of a bill is a Law/Statute. It has been noted herein before that under the extant
Copyright Act of Nigeria, statutes are not protected by copyright unlike the previous Act wherein
the same was protected. They are deemed to be in the public domain and can be freely copied
without need for permission or licence. The question herein before asked is: as at the time before
the bill becomes law, can the bill be protected by copyright law?

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As earlier noted, the list of works that could be subsumed under literary works is not exhaustive
under section 51 of the Copyright Act. To qualify as a literary work, the material does not have
to meet the taste of literary critics neither does it have to satisfy more than the minimum
threshold of literary quality or style. A work is still protectable as a literary work irrespective of
its content, length, purpose, form and whether it is published or not.
19
A draft Bill though not listed as a literary work can safely be assumed to be one because the list
of literary works is not exhaustive. By the use of the word “includes” other literary works, both
those similar to the ones already listed and those not so similar, can safely come under literary
works. We submit that a draft Bill, being a creation of the mind of its sponsor, is a literary work.
Having established that a draft bill is a literary work, we now turn to the question of its copyright
status. A draft Bill when proposed is clearly the work of the sponsor and thus, the sponsor of the
Bill owns the copyright in the Bill. Subsequent events however do not make the copyright status
as easy as that. After a Bill is proposed, it is gazetted in the gazette of the Federal Government or
Government of the State. When so gazetted, it becomes the property of the Federal government
or that of the State but no copyright of same is vested in the government. However that is an
administrative procedure and such does not erode the right to copyright of the sponsor of the
Bill.
We note the provisions of section 4 of the Copyright Act which states that copyright shall be
conferred on every work which is eligible for copyright and is made by or under the direction or
control of the government, a State authority or a prescribed international body. We emphatically
note that a gazetted draft bill does not fall under this provision. The above provision deals with
eligible copyright works, like musical works, cinematograph films, and novels etc. that were
produced under the direction of the government. The copyright in the works so produced under
the direction of the government is vested in the Government, and same shall expire like every
other copyright work.
20
19
J.O. Asein, op.cit. p. 55
20
This is similar to the position in many other jurisdictions. For example see: Article 3 and 13 of Copyright Act
2005 of Ghana; section 28 Copyright Act of India 1957; section 5 Copyright Act 1978 of South Africa; Crown
Copyright under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 of the United Kingdom.

12
Again, during deliberations and debates on a draft bill, as noted in the preceding pages of this
work, certain clauses and sections of the draft bill could be deleted and replaced by another
member proposing amendments. These amendments may change the contents of the draft bill as
presented by the sponsor and not the nature of the draft bill. The nature of the draft bill is the
idea behind the bill, and ideas are not protected by copyright. It is the contents of a work that is
protected by copyright. At this stage of the law making process, is copyright still vested in the
sponsor of the bill? Our answer to the poser is yes but with a caveat that the sponsor of the bill
has at this stage impliedly suspended his right to copyright. This is so because the essence of
proposing the bill on the floor of the legislative house is for debates both in the legislative house
and during public hearings. Thus, there should be uninhibited copying and re-copying of the bill
without permission from or recourse to the sponsor of the bill. This is to fast track the process of
passing the bill into law. However, the suspension of the right to copyright at this stage would
not include a situation where another legislator copies the same bill and re-propose same on the
floor of that legislative house or another legislative house.
Once the draft bill becomes law, the author or sponsor of the bill automatically loses copyright in
the work. The bill at this stage is no longer a bill but a legislative Act or Law and thus forms part
of official texts.
Official texts as defined in article 2(4) of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and
Artistic Works are texts of a legislative, administrative and legal nature (e.g. statute laws,
administrative regulations and court decisions) and the official translations of such texts.
21
Each
member of the Berne Convention is to determine the copyright protection to be granted to such
official texts. Most member countries however do not have copyright protection for official text,
just as is presently the case in Nigeria. Such official texts are considered to be in the public
domain.
22
This Nigerian situation is by way of comparative analysis, similar to the situation in Georgia. By
Article 8 of the Law of Georgia No. 2388-1s of September 9 1999 on Copyright and
Neighbouring Rights, official documents (laws, court decisions, other texts of administrative and
21
Available at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_text_copyright Accessed on 13th March 2016 by 1:30 AM.
22
For example see: Article 5 of the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China; German Copyright Law;
Article 1259 of Civil Code of Russian Federation; section 6(b) of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection
Act of Sudan; 206.01 Compendium II: Copyright Office Practices of the United States.

13
normative character) as well as their official translations; official symbols of State; information
of events and facts are not copyrightable. H owever, proposed official symbols and drafts of
formal documents can be copyrighted.
Conclusion
Herein, it is argued and established that copyright does not vest in the official texts of
government or State authority. However, the author and sponsor of a draft bill on the floor of a
legislative house is vested with the copyright in the bill as presented, and hence can preclude
another from copying same and tabling it on the floor of the legislative house. Where however
the bill becomes successful and is passed into law, the author/sponsor loses copyright in the
bill/new law. This is in consonance with the provisions of Nigerian Copyright Act.
Where a bill becomes unsuccessful, it is thrown out. In this situation, the former draft bill is still
the copyright of the sponsor or author. No legislator is permitted to go back and recopy the same
bill and re-introduce on the floor of the legislative house. He can only do same if sufficient work
has been done on the new draft to qualify it for a new copyright. Section 1(4) of the Copyright
Act allows it. Where a work is based on a pre-existing work, there must be sufficient material
alteration or embellishment of the previous work which suffices to make the resultant work
qualify as an original.
23
Members of the legislative house therefore have copyright over the draft bills proposed by them
and until same is successfully passed into law, that right is subsisting and enforceable.
23
J.O. Asein, op.cit. p. 91