Industrial Design

The Ministry of Trade of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced an increase of about 15% on the country’s official fees regarding intelectual property, that covers trademark, patent and design registrations.

If you wish to know more about this matter, please contact us at africa@inventa.com .

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.

Before the changes resulting from IP Law No. 1/13 of July 28, 2009, trademarks and industrial designs in Burundi were registered for an unlimited period of time.

After the promulgation of the current IP Law, the deadlines for trademarks and industrial designs were officially determined, in which trademarks shall be valid for a period of 10 years from the filing date, with the possibility of indefinite renewals for the same period of time and industrial designs shall be valid for 5 years from the filing date, with the possibility of two renewals of five years each.

The Canada – European Union Trade Agreement (CETA, from Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) aims to facilitate and reduce barriers to trade, as 98% of the trade tariffs will be removed. The deal was recently ratified by the European Parliament. CETA has several Intellectual Property (IP) related provisions which might affect companies that wish to provide goods across borders and protect their IP assets.

With the new Intellectual Property (IP) Law no. 6769, in force as of January 10th, 2017, there came a few changes to the IP system in Turkey. As of now, the registration of IP assets in Turkey is now faster and more reliable. The main changes consist of the following:

The Harare Protocol on Patents, Utility Models and Industrial Designs governs the regional procedures and substantive requirements for protection of these IP rights amongst its member-states, under the Lusaka Agreement framework and put into practice by the ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Office). The Protocol currently hosts 18 member-states, including amongst others Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia, Sudan or Botswana.

India’s new Trademark Law might come into effect shortly, either during the current month or during the next month of December, after the Controller of Patents, Designs and Trademarks disclosed a public draft of the amendment to the 2002 Trademark Rules, dated November 19th, inviting stakeholders to comment the same.

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.

Inventa International will be present in the first edition of Web Summit in Portugal. This year's edition will take place in Lisbon, between 7 and 10 November, with the expected participation of more than 50,000 professionals and a thousand international investors.

The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) has signed a deal (October 3rd) with the recently renamed European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to foster bilateral cooperation for matters related to trademarks, designs and enforcement thereof. Notably, EUIPO does not support patent applications through its Offices.

This Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) renews the previous 1999 and 2011 agreements and create opportunities for joint conferences, seminars, training programs to share expertise in IP matters and comparative IP studies.