IP Portfolio Management
We offer and manage IP portfolios globally for major brand owners in a cross-section of industries including the emergent cryptocurrency space. This involves overseeing procedural matters as such as searches, filing, assignment or recordal.
Let Swiftlaw help simplify your in-house counsel’s job by coordinating and managing your company’s trademark, industrial design or patent portfolio. By outsourcing the co-ordination and management of your trade mark, patent and design portfolios to Swiftlaw.
Contact us for more information at info@swiftlaw.co
Trademarks in Africa
Where a business entity has a particular image or text or a combination of an image and text (a "Trademark") which represents its brand and wants to protect that Trademark. It should file what is known as a trademark application at the relevant Trademark Registry. A successful application grants the entity the exclusive ownership rights the trademark for a fixed period which is renewable.
Our current practice includes: Trademark Fillings/ Prosecutions, Pre-filling Advice/ Search/ clearance advice, Complying with official actions, Recordal of owners name and/ or address, Assignments, Renewals, Licenses, International trademark counselling, Trademark portfolio management, Opposition Proceedings, Appealing Trademark Refusals, ARIPO (regional) Trademark Fillings, OAPI (regional)Trademark Fillings.
OAPI
OAPI is the African Intellectual Property Organisation (OAPI is the Acronym in French) and it is an IP grouping which allows for the registration of a trademark to be effective in all its member states who are predominantly French speaking west Africa and parts of central Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic,Chad, Comoros (excluding Mayotte), Congo (Brazzaville),Equatorial Guinea,Guinea, Gabon, Guinea Bissau,Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal & Togo).
ARIPO
ARIPO is an acronym for the African Regional Intellectual Property Office and comprises: Botswana, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, Sào Tomé and Príncipe, Swaziland, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania (mainland), Zimbabwe Unlike in OAPI where registration in 1 country automatically give you protection in all the other member states, here you may chose which states you intend to designate thereby reducing your cost of registration.
Industrial Design in Africa
This refers the aesthetic look and feel of a product that has nothing to do with its functionality. A unique industrial design may be protected by registration of said design with the national registry. Industrial Designs are typically valid for up to 15 years in most African jurisdictions.
Our practice involves filling national and ARIPO design applications, renewal of design applications and yearly maintenance of design applications.
Patents in Africa
A patent is an exclusive right to a product or a process that generally provides a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. The patent owner may give permission to, or license, other parties to use the invention on mutually agreed terms. The owner may also sell the right to the invention to someone else, who will then become the new owner of the patent.
We cover pre-filling advice such as searches to determine patentability, filling and prosecution of National and Paris Convention patent applications, ARIPO (regional) patent applications, strategy advice on most efficient route for patent protection.
Copyright in Africa
Copyright refers to the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings. Copyright typically lasts for the lifetime of the creator plus an additional 70 years thereafter.
Ghana is a signatory of the Berne Convention ( currently has over 150 countries as signatories) which allows copyright protection in one country to have effect or be recognised in each member country as if it was registered there as well. Our practice involves filling copyright applications, copyright strategy advice , copyright licensing and assignments.