ARIPO-Trade Marks  

(African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation)

ARIPO:
ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation) with a central registry in Harare, Zimbabwe facilitates the central filing of patents, designs and trade marks.

Membership:
The relevant protocol on trade marks is the Banjul Protocol, which came into effect on 6 March 1997. This empowers ARIPO to register trade marks on behalf of the ARIPO contracting states. At present, the only states which have acceded to the Banjul Protocol and who thus may be designated in an ARIPO trade mark application, are:

• Botswana
• Namibia
• Uganda
• Lesotho
• Liberia
• Swaziland
• Zimbabwe
• Malawi
• Tanzania*

* In this context, an ARIPO registration would only be effective, if at all, in the mainland portion, to which we refer for convenience as Tanganyika.

All of these countries are “common law” countries, and as such an international agreement can only become part of domestic law when enacted into the national law by the national legislature.

The Trade Marks Act in Botswana makes specific provision for the recognition of rights flowing from ARIPO registrations. However, none of the other countries have enacted amendments to their national legislation to give effect to ARIPO registrations.

Accordingly, since there is only one member state in which rights flowing from an ARIPO registration can be enforced, it is our strong recommendation that clients should continue to protect their trade marks by filing national applications in each member state of interest.

Notwithstanding the questionable validity of ARIPO trade mark registrations, we can and do file applications directly with the ARIPO office for those clients who elect to follow this route.

Outline of procedures:
In terms of the Banjul Protocol, an application may cover any number of classes of goods or services, and may designate all or some of the contracting states. However, even though it is possible to file an ARIPO application for both goods and services, Malawi and Uganda have no provisions for service marks in their national legislation. Accordingly, it would not be possible to obtain service mark protection in those particular countries through an ARIPO registration.

Documents required:
A.   New Applications

• Power of Attorney (not legalised).
• 10 prints, except for word marks in ordinary type.

B.   Renewals

• No documents required.

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Patents

Please see ARIPO-Patents

 

 

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