Utility Model

Sanctions. The word we hear the most these days. The target is only one: Russia. Due to the unjustified invasion of Ukraine and all the devastation caused to the country and its people.

United States, Canada, the 27 European Union member states, the UK, Montenegro, Switzerland, Albania, Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, North Macedonia, and also Japan, South Korea, Australia, Micronesia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Taiwan – what do all of these countries have in common?

Starting on 1st January 2022, applicants of the ARIPO system will be able to designate Seychelles in their patent and design applications. The President of Seychelles, Wavel Ramkalawan, signed the instrument of accession to the Harare Protocol on 26th August 2021.

Vítor Sérgio Moreira, Patent Engineer at Inventa International​, provide a case study on utility models in Angola, Brazil, Mozambique and Portugal.

The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (henceforth, ARIPO) is a supranational organization in Africa, for the cooperation of among African states in all matters related to Intellectual Property, first established by the Lusaka Agreement in 1976. At the moment, this supranational organization is comprised of nineteen member-states and four treaties for different Intellectual Property rights:

Intellectual property rights play a crucial role in the marketing strategy of all kinds of an increasing number of companies, and it involves a set of processes, creations and communications offerings which have value for the clients, customers or society in general. Marketing necessarily generates intangible assets that may be protected by intellectual property rights. In fact, this is the first significative aspect of the influence of intellectual property rights on marketing strategies: the protection of intangible assets in a marketing campaign.

This new Law had a notorious inspiration in the Portuguese Law, from which many solutions were adopted, making a revision of the law previously in force (Law no. 4/2001, 31 December and Decree no. 6/2004, 30 June) that needed some alterations due to the evolution of the current needs in what concerns Intellectual Property matters.

The new Act was approved July 14th, 2016 by the House of Representatives of Liberia and was published past July 22nd, 2016. It is noteworthy that it has received unanimous approval by the Liberian legislators, a decision which was based on a report issued by a join commission with members of the areas of commerce, industry and justice.

The Ugandan Industrial Property Act of 2014 is now in force.

The main features are summarised below:

a) Patents and Utility Models

Finally, PCT international and national phase applications will be recognised.

Apart from this, some major rules regarding biotechnological inventions are introduced, namely, some patent exclusions were provide, such as, natural substances, whether purified, synthetized or otherwise isolated from nature.

As from the 27th of February 2016, São Tomé and Principe will effectively become a member of ARIPO. It will therefore be possible to designate São Tomé and Príncipe in an ARIPO application filed on or after the 19th of August 2014.

The government of S. Tomé and Príncipe deposited its instrument of Accession to the Banjul Protocol on the 27th of November of 2015.

The accession of São Tomé and Príncipe makes it the 18th member state party to the Harare Protocol (patents, industrial designs and utility models).

The Industrial Property Act 2014 in the Seychelles entry into force on March 1, 2015.

The key contributions of the new Act include:

Trademarks: