Stephanie Okereke Faces N100m Law Suit For Copy Right Infringement

Nollywood top actress, Stephanie Okereke-Linus has been slammed a N100 million law suit by an author, Daniella Madudu for alleged copy right infringement of her book titled “Behind Her Veil”. Madudu claims that major parts of her book were lifted and used without any form of acknowledgement to her in Stephanie Okere-Linus’ movie, “Dry”.
According to the author, she gave the manuscript of the book to one of her friends, Joy Ndidi who later became Stephanie’s Personal Assistant to edit, only for her to see major excerpts of the book revealed in Stephanie Okereke’s movie, ‘Dry’.  But the actress in a statement maintained that her movie had been registered with the National Copyright Commission (NCC) since 2012 while the book was officially published in 2014.
The actress also stated that the said book has never been registered with the NCC till date. She further said that her movie ‘Dry’ was shot in a bid to lend her voice to the “Child  Not Bride” campaign.  However the actress admitted that she received a letter from one Rafiu Bello acting on behalf of Daniella Madudu on May 19 accusing her of appropriation of an original literary work”. That was allegedly stolen from her by Joy Ndidi.
Okereke Linus said that among many other things, the letter demanded that she credits Madudu with ownership of her work, pay the sum of N60,000,000 (Sixty million Naira) and royalties or face a campaign of calumny.  No date has been fixed yet for the court case.