Intellectual Property Rights in the Creative Economy: Protecting Digital Content Creators in Nigeria and Uganda

This study investigates how Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection operates within Nigeria and Uganda's creative economies while studying the existing threats to digital content creators. The problem exists because existing legal systems, which include Nigeria's Copyright Act 2004 and Uganda's Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act 2006, cannot handle the current digital piracy and social media infringement problem. The research study intends to assess current legal systems while discovering their enforcement deficiencies and developing a unified system which will provide legal protection throughout the region. The research employs a doctrinal approach through the PRISMA Guide, which enables the research to discover primary legal statutes and secondary scholarly literature for evaluation. Research results demonstrate that existing legal protections face challenges given the gaps that exist in the laws of Nigeria and Uganda; also, institutions lack strength, and the public lacks knowledge about Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems. The research concludes that agencies need to work together through legislative updates for better interagency cooperation. The study recommends that dedicated courts for intellectual property and technological enforcement solutions should be established to protect creators' economic and moral rights in the digital era.