Trademarks

As the first national trademarks granted in Cape Verde celebrate 10 years of being in force, the country is in the early stages of strengthening its national system of IP protection.

While Cape Verde does not yet belong to any major IP treaty enabling the registration of IP rights, trademarks filed directly with Cape Verde’s IP Office (IGQPI) have provided local and foreign applicants with legal protection.

Intellectual property

At first glance, registering a trademark internationally may appear a simple task for companies seeking to protect their mark in various countries. However, entrepreneurs should have some prior knowledge and take care in defining the strategy for internationalizing their trademark registrations.

International Trademark – Madrid Protocol

The simplest way of filing an international application is by submitting an international application under the aegis of the Madrid Protocol, managed by the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Sharing its place with other phases which make up part of a trademark’s life cycle, such as the early stages of branding and filing strategy until the phase of defence of the right, maintenance is important to IP holders, expressly for peculiar systems such as the Cape Verdean one.

The year 2021 marks an important phase in trademark maintenance in Cape Verde, as it establishes the commencement of the payment of renewals in the island country.

In relation to the 50th anniversary of Inventa International, we have been given the challenge to analyze certain intellectual property data over the past 50 years on the African continent.

As it is impossible to cover a panoramic view of the various events, we chose just a few topics we found interesting for this minor-scale study. At the outset, it seems important for us to outline a short introduction about the African continent and the protection of industrial property in the countries of which it is made up.

Changes in São Tomé and Príncipe's trademark regime – including a detailed opposition process - came into force in 2017. Below are the key points of the system, including all the major deadlines.

Refusal grounds

A trademark may be refused in opposition proceedings on the following grounds:

Located in the Horn of Africa with a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres and approximately 118 million inhabitants, Ethiopia shares borders with Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Somaliland, Kenya, South Sudan and Sudan.

The history of the country dates back 2,000 years. From 1973 to around 2000, Ethiopia was plagued by drought, famine, infectious diseases, internal conflict, war and an unstable economy.

In a globalized world, driven by the information technologies revolution and the service economy, the tangible assets are less and less valuable, while intangible assets, increasingly valuable, are emerging as the key to success, leading the companies to seek how to best use their intangible assets.

With a population growth rate of 2.25%, Egypt has the second biggest population in Africa, as well as the third-largest economy. The Egyptian government is promoting investment in all economic sectors and is already a continental leader in some. For instance, Egypt is the largest construction market in Africa, with more than $350 billion of active projects.

Just under half (48%) of active projects are represented by the real estate sector. The energy and transport sectors take up second and third places with 18% and 17%, respectively, of active projects. 

Rwanda is a landlocked country, located south of the Equator in east-central Africa, bordering Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Uganda. Its capital, located in the centre of the country, is Kigali and the local currency is the Rwandan Franc, issued by the National Bank of Rwanda.

The last two decades have been ones of reconstruction and reconciliation, following the troubled 90s that left the country scarred by civil war and the 1994 genocide, in which more than 800,000 civilians were tragically killed.