Enforcement

Inventa contributed again with the Portugal chapter in the latest edition of International Comparative Legal Guides - Trade Marks 2022, published by Global Legal Group.

These guidelines summarize legislation and regulations regarding trademarks in Portugal focusing on many aspects as the main steps, timings, requirements and other related rights applied to this jurisdiction.

Following the approved accession of Cape Verde to the Lusaka Agreement (ARIPO), the country now joins four key WIPO treaties: Madrid Protocol, Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), Geneva Act of the Lisbon Agreement and Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.

In many countries, a patent can only be registered if it is new, has an inventive step, and is industrially applicable. In addition to meeting these substantial requirements, you also must meet other formal requirements, including legal deadlines.

It turns out that in many jurisdictions there are types of patents with substantial lighter requirements, namely utility models.

The amendments introduced through The Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act Number 18 of 2018, which come into effect in January 2019, have provided significant changes in intellectual property rights (IPRs), as this Act involves amendments in several laws of the Industrial Property Act (2001), the Copyright Act (2001), the Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions Act (2016) and The Anti-Counterfeit Act (2018) (“the ACA Act”).

When CultureTree's tweet and hashtag #Yorubaisnotforsale went viral, it ignited an online debate about whether registering a trademark name for an ethnic group is cultural appropriation.

The Yoruba people – who live mainly in Benin, Nigeria and Togo – represent around 35 million people in Africa, making them one of the largest ethnic groups on the continent. Most are from Nigeria, where they represent up to 15.5% of the country’s population.

Introduction

By the end of 2019, humanity was confronted by a new infectious disease caused by a new coronavirus, the covid-19 that led, on March 11th, 2020 the Word Health Organization (WHO) to declare the state of a global pandemic.

In June 2021, the Casablanca Commercial Court invalidated the Moroccan businessman Mohamed Zehraoui’s claim to use the word “Habanos”, which belongs to the Cuban Habanos Corporation, on cigars manufactured in Morocco.

It all started in 2011 when the entrepreneur registered the company name Habanos SA in the Casablanca Commercial Register, taking advantage of the fact that the Cuban corporation of the same name had not registered the brand in Morocco.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic which effectively put much of life on hold, Nigeria enjoyed an extremely productive 2020 with respect to copyright law reforms and court decisions.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Industrial Property Law has been in force since 1982. Article 5 stipulates that there are three kinds of patent:

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) came into effect on January 1, 2021 and is the largest trade area in the world by number of participating countries since the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The objectives outlined in article 3 of the treaty include the establishment of a common market for products and services, a regional customs authority, enhancing the competitiveness of member states’ economies both in Africa and globally, and promoting industrial development.