Kenya’s most eloquent man, PLO Lumumba, sued for ‘plagiarism’
A Constitutional human rights lawyer has dragged a former director of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to court for plagiarizing his article from a local weekly newspaper to a journal.
Mr Wachira Maina has sued Prof Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba for allegedly stealing his intellectual property in the Law Society of Kenya Journal as his own work.
Lawyer Gitobu Imanyara, who is representing Mr Maina, claimed that the publication by the renowned orator is misleading, injurious and dishonest since it is being disseminated to Kenya School of Law students as PLO’s work.
Mr Imanyara accused the KSL director for dishonouring his office and therefore wants the court to suspend him from being the institution’s boss pending the hearing and determination of the case.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
“PLO has plagiarized the intellectual property belonging to Mr Maina and has breached the constitution as expected of a state or public officer, this court needs to restrain him from performing his duties temporarily,” Mr Imanyara said.
The lawyer wants the matter, certified urgent, heard on a priority basis and that PLO, KSL, the Laws Society Kenya as well as the Law Africa Publishing company be barred from disseminating contents of the said journal.
The article with the alleged plagiarized was titled From Jurisprudence to Poliprudence: The Kenyan Presidential Election Petition 2013.
The article was published in the LSK’s journal. But the lawyer accuses PLO of lifting nearly 5,000 words verbatim from his piece which was published by the East African newspaper on April 20, 2013.
