Industrial Property

The Angolan Patent and Trademark Office has announced by Notification n.º 7/2020, the resumption of its activities from April 27.

This Notification follows the Presidential Decree No. 120/20, of April 24 which, despite extending the state of emergency, provides in its Article 14 the reopening of the Public Services and foresees some security measures.

On April 16, 2020, the counting of deadlines for the practice of acts by private individuals that had been suspended since the publication of Law no. 1-A/2020, which entered into force on March 12, 2020, as restarted.

The African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) allows an applicant to register a regional trademark, which designates the following countries:

• Botswana;
• Eswatini;
• Lesotho;
• Liberia;
• Malawi;
• Namibia;
• Sao Tome and Principe;
• Tanzania;
• Uganda; and
• Zimbabwe.

One of the main differences between ARIPO and the African Intellectual Property Organisation is that at the former it is possible to designate several or all member states.

During its short existence, the Cape Verde Institute of Management and Quality of Intellectual Property (IGQPI) has mainly focused on protecting trademarks and patents. Other IP rights – such as appellations of origin and geographical indications (GIs) – have therefore been ignored.

Many African countries have raised their IP fees in the past few years. This is due to economic growth, a rising interest in protecting IP assets and the modernisation of countries’ IP systems. For example, in 2017, the Democratic Republic of Congo hiked up its prices by roughly 15% and South Africa’s Trademark Office announced an increase in official fees (effective from 1 October 2019). Egypt has also stated its intention to follow suit for industrial property services payments. This article focuses on Ghana and Tunisia, which have both raised costs for their IP services this year.

There are multiple types of industrial property rights that an entity can use to protect the following distinctive signs in commerce in Mozambique: trademark, logotype, trade name, establishment name, establishment insignia and corporate name.

Distinctive signs and the law

After an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers, the East-Timor government decided to grant a point tolerance on the 17th and 18th of March in the Municipality of Dili.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) have announced that all deadlines between 9 March 2020 and 30 April 2020 are extended until 1 May 2020 (in fact, all limits are extended until Monday 4 May, given that Friday 1 May is Labor Day).

This week, LACS hosted the workshop "Intellectual Property Do's and Dont's" from Inventa International.

This year, INTA’s Europe Conference “Brands, Sports, and Esports: A Brand (R)evolution” took place in Madrid, Spain.