How to protect your app idea and code in Nigeria

The Copyright Act 2022 says plainly that copyright does not cover ideas, procedures, systems, methods of operation or concepts.¹ If you tell a friend about a “Bolt for generator repairs” and he builds it first, the law won't help you.

Code is different. The Nigerian Copyright Commission counts computer programs as literary works, the same class as books.² A work qualifies once some effort has gone into giving it an original character and it has been fixed in some medium, which for code means saved in a file.¹ No form is needed. The Act says eligibility for copyright doesn't depend on any formality.¹ Your copyright then lasts for your lifetime plus 70 years.¹

What that covers is the code itself and the right to copy, publish and adapt it.¹ Someone who studies your app and writes their own version from scratch hasn't copied your code, even if the result looks a lot like yours.

This is where most Nigerian builders get caught. Under the Act, copyright first belongs to the author unless an agreement says otherwise.¹ So if you paid a freelancer ₦600,000 to build your app and nothing was signed, the freelancer may still own the code. The same goes for a cofounder who left, or a cousin who helped on weekends.

Fix it with a written assignment. The Act says an assignment of copyright has no effect unless it's in writing,¹ so a WhatsApp voice note saying “it's yours, bro” won't count. One page does the job. It names the project, says the person hands over all copyright in the code and designs to you or your company, and carries their signature and the date. Get it signed when you make the last payment. Chasing a freelancer in Port Harcourt for a signature two years later, with a buyer waiting, is a different story.

You don't have to register with the Commission, and registering doesn't create your copyright. The Act says so.¹ What you get is a record. If there's ever a fight about who wrote the code, the Register counts as first evidence of the work and its details, and the court starts from the presumption that the registered author is the author.¹

You register on the Commission's e-Registration portal. The fee is ₦10,000, paid through Remita.² For a project you plan to sell, or one that earns already, it's cheap insurance with your name and a date on it.

Copyright doesn't protect a name or a logo. A trademark does. The Trademarks Registry under the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment warns that a CAC registration gives you no trademark protection at all.³ Many founders assume it does.

The Registry lists an availability search at ₦2,500, a new application at ₦16,750 and a certificate at ₦11,750.⁴ Trademarks are sorted into 45 classes,³ so you file in the classes that match what your app does. Run the search before you print anything with the name on it.

A non-disclosure agreement is a contract. It binds only the people who sign it, and it lets you go after them if they share what you showed them. It doesn't stop anyone else, and it can't make an idea secret once it's public.

It's also hard to enforce. You'd have to prove the person used your information, and information that was already public isn't covered. That's one reason investors rarely sign them. John Rampton, writing in Entrepreneur, points out that investors see many similar pitches and back the team more than the idea, and that asking for an NDA can cost you useful feedback.⁵

So save NDAs for the moments they fit. A contractor who will see your code. A buyer about to open your revenue files. A partner getting access to your users. For a pitch at a meetup or a post in a WhatsApp group, skip it.

Most real losses in Nigeria don't come from copying. They come from a developer who holds the only login, a domain bought on a friend's card, or a Play Store account under a cofounder's personal Gmail.

Open a GitHub organisation for the project and keep the repositories there, with you as owner. Buy the domain in an account you control, with your company's email. Put the Play and App Store developer accounts, Paystack and hosting in the business name. Keep a private list of every account, who has access and when you last checked. When someone leaves, remove their access that week. Our guide to making a project easy to sell has more on getting everything into one name before a buyer turns up.

On Prow: Before you can list a project with a link for sale on Prow, you prove you own it, with a DNS record, a tag on your homepage, a file on your site or a file in a public GitHub repo. You can keep your data room files behind Prow's NDA, and its confidentiality lasts two years whether the buyer buys or not. Posting a project and proving revenue are free. Listing it for sale is a one-off fee, from ₦10,000 for Early-stage, and when it sells you and the buyer each pay 1.5%, at least ₦5,000 each, and EscrowPay's own fee is split between you. Deal money is held in escrow with EscrowPay, never by Prow.

• Your code is protected from the day you write it. Your idea isn't.
• Everyone who wrote code for you has signed a written assignment.
• You've registered the code with the Commission if you plan to sell.
• You've searched and filed a trademark for the name.
• NDAs go to contractors and serious buyers, not to every pitch.
• GitHub, the domain, the stores and payments are all in the company's name.