IP Rights

Somalia has been in an ongoing conflict due to the Civil War that has erupted in 1986. Ever since, Somali people have been living and enduring extend periods of upheaval, violence and uncertainty. The political instability is unprecedented.

Up until 1960, Somalia's geographical circumscription was dominated by England, Italy and France. The French part of the territory formed the country we now know as Djibouti and the English and Italian part formed the Republic of Somalia.

The 10th Extraordinary Session of the African Union Assembly was reunited last March in Rwanda to sign the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA).

The “Brexit” referendum took place a year and a half ago and the terms for the withdrawal began being formally discussed since March last year. Intellectual Property rights had to be - rightly so - part of the debate.

In the light of EU and UK Government’s most recent draft agreement on the country’s withdrawal from the European Union - published March 19th - provisions were made on the protection and enforcement of IP rights, to be of effect after the end of the transitional period.

An agreement was made between the European Union and the United Kingdom, regarding the Brexit and its implications on Intellectual Property.

It was established that after the Brexit’s transition period ends (December 31st of 2020), the owners of Commmunity Designs and European Union Trademarks will have their rights protected in the UK.

The owners of the above trademarks shall, “without any re-examination, become the holders of a comparable registered and enforceable in IP right in the UK”.

The new Bill has relevant changes to it, which makes it look far more like a modern trademark statute.

Three months ago, on December 2017, a new Trademark Bill was approved by the Malawi’s Parliament and sent to the President in order to assent it. This Bill was created to replace the Trade Marks Act 1957, which was yet antiquated and in need of updating.

The protection of the rights of indigenous people, including their intellectual property rights, has made a great progress in the past few years.
Not being considered in legal legislation or literature, this progress is largely due to the fact that indigenous names, images, symbols or patterns of commercial products have never been so common. Incorporating verbal and visual elements of indigenous people into brands, designs or models, has proved to be an effective way to make the products more attractive, more distinctive and therefore of more economic value.

Due to the discrepancy of the Angolan legal framework with the needs of an efficient protection system, the current Law on Industrial Property, approved February 28th, 1992, is outdated in relation to the advances occurred in the global Industrial Property Systems. Today, technological innovation represents the economic segment that has grown the most and has greatly contributed to the economic development of countries.

Recently, the Brazilian IP Office has published a set of guidelines that will help to define the technical examinations are conducted in respect to IP Law no. 9279/96 and with the proceedings of the legal act no. 127/9.

These guidelines are divided into 5 chapters:

-    What is considered as invention;

-    Examples of CII, namely the cases of algorithms, on-board software and text processors;

-    Patent requirements;

-    Structure of a CII application.

Following the 2016 WIPO Assemblies, its member states have agreed to increase the number of physical offices into new frontiers. As such, going into the future, WIPO will have two offices located in the continent of Africa, located in Algeria and Nigeria.

These offices will provide the opportunity of expanding the accumulated knowledge of African IP while also serve the purpose of increasing the awareness to WIPO’s services and furthering the goal of international cooperation, concerning Intellectual Property, among all the member-states of WIPO.

"Mozambique: A new-look legal sytem" an article written by João Cabral from Inventa International for the prestigious magazine World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR).