Dubai Taxi Corporation issues Cease & Desist Notice to Amerado
The Dubai Taxi Corporation (DTC) has recently issued a cease-and-desist notice to a Ghanaian musician whose name is Amerado. The notice was issued due to the unauthorized use of DTC’s logo on Amerado’s promotional materials for his new single named ‘Taxi Driver’. The singer’s track was shot in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and was released on 5th March of this year only.
‘Derrick Sarfo Kantanka’ is the real name of singer Amerado. He is famous and everyone knows him by his stage name Amerado. He is a Ghanaian rapper from Kumasi. He became famous and everyone started to identify him for his rap music in Ghana in the year 2018. Amerado started his career in the industry of rapping when he was discovered by Azee Ntwene in the year 2015. He later backed the third position at the Solid FM Freestyle Show which landed him in grabbing an offer to join fellow rapper Strongman Burner at Mic Burnerz Music Company. He was also summoned to feature on the GH Youth All-Stars that was hosted by Mix Master Garzy to compose the official peace song for the general elections of Ghana held in the year 2016.
The cease-and-desist notice was served to the rapper through the medium of social media. However, the notice demanded he takes down all of his promotional material including cover art for his song.
The DTC was established in the year 1995 and it is a subsidiary of the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority. It is a legally mandated body in charge who has all the legal authorities for providing transportation services in Dubai.
“We would like to inform you that DTC’s assets cannot be used in any communication material without prior approval and the ad also must be relevant to our services otherwise, our material cannot be used,” the DTC notice reads.“You are kindly requested to delete any images/videos that include DTC’s material from all platforms as your Ad is irrelevant to our services,” DTC further added.
In response to the notice, the rapper said that he was ready to comply with the DTC request and already had changed the official cover art for his single track ‘Taxi Driver’.
“All posts containing the old picture should be replaced as we continue to stick with the new one,” a portion of Amerado’s statement reads. “Information has been sent to all our online stores to commence the replacement of the art cover.”
Article 38 of the UAE Criminal Law of 1987 with its amendments read as “Copyright offenders shall be punished by detention for not less than three months and payment of fine, not less than AED 50 000 [about $13 600] and not more than AED 500 000.”
