Award-winning musician, Julius Owino Ooko, popularly known as Juliani, has threatened to sue Jubilee Party for using his hit song ‘Utawala’ to promote a Building Bridges Initiative video without his consent.
Through his lawyer Katee David of James T. Makori Advocates, Juliani maintained that the Jubilee party infringed on his rights by using his ‘Utawala’ in one of its promotional videos on Twitter.
In a video posted on Saturday, Juliani’s song could be heard playing in the background of the video that was captioned:
“Did you know that the #BBI report proposes the establishment of the Office of the Ombudsman of the Judiciary which shall play the important oversight role and receive complaints from the members of the public against judicial officers?”
Juliani further claimed that the party did not seek his consent before using a portion of his song as a soundtrack of the video.
“Our client, being the author of the song, enjoys exclusive rights under Copyright law hence his creative work cannot be used by anyone else for whatever purpose without authorization," said the advocate.
The terse letter listed several demands to be met within 72 hours, key among them being the pulling down of the promotional video.
The demand letter read in part that “Following the unauthorized use of our client’s song in your promotional material, an impression has been created that our client is partisan and that he endorses your political views, which is not the case.
“In view of the foregoing, we hereby demand that you cease and desist from further using our client’s creative works to advance your agenda and to pull down the promotional video from all your social media platforms with immediate effect.
“We also demand on behalf of our client that you admit liability for infringement of intellectual property rights in writing within the next 72 hours so that we can further engage you on quantum”.
Below is the demand letter by Juliani.
