<<Print>>Private legal Practitioner and lecturer at the University of Ghana School of law, Dr. Poku Edusei, has described as worrying the issues surrounding the Electoral Commission’s yet to be launched new logo.
Dr. Edusei, who specialized in copyright law, says the new logo exposes the Commission and Ghana to a protracted legal battle if it is found to have been unlawfully copied from another entity.
According to the lecturer, Ghana has the Trademark Act which seeks “to prevent the registration of resemblance and trust” adding that because of that, “if you are applying to the Registrar General’s Department to register anything and it is realized that it violates section 5 of the Act, that registration will not be allowed.” “The converse is equally true that state bodies must not use signs that cause them to lose their identities and for that reason if you look at the Judicial Service, its logos would have coat of arms as part of it, a lot of state institutions have such in their logos.
So if this Electoral Commission with such a logo and having the state emblem as part of it is now transitioning into the world of merchandise is worrisome,” he added. Dr. Edusei further said if claims that institutions outside the country have similar logos “it means that the design is not original and it also means that the proposed logo will violate trademark of another entity and at the end of the day we will be exposing the EC to legal suit.”
He also shared in the popular view that the decision to design a new logo for the electoral commission is misplaced. “We can take our time and then even if we want to re-brand the Electoral Commission, design a logo that is worthwhile by including the symbols of the state so that the identity of Ghanaians will not be lost,” Dr. Edusei added. EC’s new logo The EC last week announced that it will soon launch a new logo in its bid to re-brand. The new logo, a blue rounded crest with patches of white, yellow, red and green, has been described by critics as childish and inappropriate. The critics were of the view the logo does not reflect the work of the commission and that the current one rather communicates better what the commission stands for.
The current Logo has a black star in between two eagles at both sides of a shield, with a hand in the middle casting a ballot, which gives one an idea of what the Commission does. It also has the inscription ‘Transparency, Fairness, Integrity. The new one however has none of these features.