Philippine E-Journals

Intellectual Property Rights: The Legal Perspective

Delia S. Tantuico

Discipline: Law

 

Abstract:

The most popular song ever to emerge from Africa, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, was composed and recorded in 1939 by Solomon Linda, a Zulu singer who hunted lions as a boy. The song was an attempt to translate into English a traditional African lion-hunting song Mbube. On his third take at the recording studio, Linda came up with the memorable lines, "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight..." The studio obtained copyright to the song and sold it to a variety of record companies. In the 1960s, a folk group recorded the song as Wimoweh. Most recently, the song was used in the film The Lion King. Thus, over the last 60 years, the royalty income of the song has been estimated to be from $US 10 to 20 million. Yet, Solomon Linda was paid just one British pound in cash and had a menial job of stacking records for the rest of his life. He died in 1962 but only in 1980 was his wife able to afford a headstone for his grave (Penna and Visser, 2000, p. 380). Had Linda been given intellectual property rights to his composition and the corresponding economic benefits due him during his lifetime, who knows how many more songs like his would have been composed for our listening enjoyment?