Judge Dismisses Copyright Infrigenemnt Suit

At last, a ruling comes for a book that was an object of court trials for almost two years.

Now, it is back to bookshops and libraries. 

A judge in Addis Ababa ruled in favor of  Centre Francais des Etudes Ethiopiennes and Zamra Publishers on Tuesday when he dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the two publishers.

The book in question was Mers’e Hazen Wolde Qirqos’s Of what I Saw and Heard which was published in 2004, that chronicles  the last years of Emperor Menelik and the brief rule of Iyassu.

Some two years before, attorneys representing Merse’e Hazen Wolde Qirqos’s son filed suit against the publishers and the translator, Dr. Hailu Habtu alleging that they had stolen the manuscript from him. The judge ruled that the work is not subject to copyright protection as it was written 62 years ago and it was found out that ,the type written version of the manuscript was found in public library.