KAMPALA —Daily Monitor photojournalist Alex Esagala has filed a lawsuit against New Vision Printing and Publishing Company Limited, alleging copyright infringement.
The suit claims, Vision Group didn’t get the authority to publish one of his images in its Luganda paper the Bukedde.
The lawsuit filed on Wednesday, December 18 in the Commercial Division of the High Court seeks a total UGX400m in damages and compensation arising from the infringement of copyright being usage fees, damages from the date of publication of the photography until full settlement of the suit and costs.
Esagala, through his lawyers of Kaggwa and Kaggwa Advocates, says on the 25th day of November 2019, the Vision Group through its local dialect newspaper Bukedde published on page 18 the same photograph on almost half a page without accrediting or seeking the consent of the Plaintiff yet it was a special report on how to overcome strikes in universities.
Lawyers representing the popular photojournalist late last month asked the company to pay usage fees and damages of UGX.400m a request Esagala says officials at Vision Group just ignored up to now.
Lawyers say the defendant [Vision Group] with impunity neglected to acknowledge the works of the Plaintiff [Esagala] up to date while continuing to enjoy a benefit at the exploitation and detriment of the Plaintiff as the author of the photograph.
Esagala through his lawyers contends that in the circumstances, the Vision Group is liable to pay the said sum of money and has no defence to the claim whatsoever either at law or at all.
The photo that is a subject of this suit won the photo of the year at the Uganda Press Photo Awards in 2018, an event that was sponsored by the European Union, Canon, Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) and the United States Embassy in Uganda.
