As preparations for his Mbilo Mbilo concert that is on tonight at Hotel Africana were going on, Eddy Kenzo was also busy with a legal team to have Coca Cola pay for using a video clip he feels belonged to him in the A Billion Reasons To Believe, commercial.
The commercial has a clip of the Sitya Loss dancers doing their thing, extracted from the viral Sitya Loss video. However, this time the sound is Kate Perry’s Fireworks.
But Kenzo through Karuhanga, Tabaro & Associates, wrote to Coca Cola’s Ugandan manufacturers Century Bottling Company indicating that they intended to sue for copyright infringement through illegal use of a video clip from the Sitya Loss video.
However, Coca Cola Uganda wrote back and referred Kenzo and his lawyers to Oglivy Africa Limited, the agency that handles the company’s creative works across East, West and Central Africa. In the letter however, Coca Cola indicated that the agency had advised that the footage that was used in the commercial didn’t belong to Kenzo but rather Mr Dauda Kavuma, the founder of the Triplets Foundation and he was paid.
Sources close to Kenzo told us that he was shocked by the revelation which Kavuma confirmed.
Kavuma however argues that the footage used was that of the Triplets dancers. “That footage is ours. We recorded that video ourselves, it’s not the official video for the Sitya Loss song, this was a fun video that went viral. Therefore we own all rights to it,” he told us.
Kenzo is expected to sit with his legal team and strategise on the next move; for now he told us, he is concentrating on his concert that is on at Hotel Africana tonight.
