On 27 and 28 November, the third and last of a cycle of three online workshops for teacher coordinators and Sakpatenti staff representatives will take place.

The workshops, organised by the EU-Georgian Intellectual Property Project (EUGIPP), are part of the initiative ‘Creativity and IP in Georgian schools’, which intends to reach out to over 1 000 Georgian students during the forthcoming academic year.

On 23 November 2020, Mozambique officially launched the newly created geographical indication (GI) Cabrito de Tete: the first GI registered in ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Organization). The launch marks the outcome of a long preparation process, which will lead to further intellectual property protection, high quality standards and new business opportunities.

The European Intellectual Property Office EUIPO (represented by the AfrIPI PMT) together with the European Commission (DG DEVCO) will organise an online seminar on the EU partnership with Africa on Intellectual Property Rights, in the context of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The webinar will take place on Tuesday, 15 December 2020, and is specifically designed to target African Intellectual Property Offices (IPOs).

Inventors often favour the legal certainty of patents granted by patent systems with substantive examination. Due to a lack of resources and capacity, only a few countries in Africa conduct any form of substantive examination. With the exception of Kenya, over 90 % of patent applications are filed in ARIPO member states through designation in an ARIPO patent application as opposed to direct national filing.

The AfrIPI project supports the Cabrito de Tete geographical indication (Mozambique). It does so by providing technical and logistical assistance in commercial testing. Two training sessions for producer association members were organised in Tete, Mozambique on 26/30/10 and 02/06/11 respectively. The training will be followed by the official Commercial Test Launch Event of the Cabrito de Tete geographical indication on the 23 November 2020 in Maputo, Mozambique. The EU Delegation to Mozambique will attend the event representing the EU, with the Ambassador, H.E.

ARISE+ IPR provided a strategic training course for the IPR helpdesk staff in Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar, covering several areas under the scope of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and the IP protection system in the respective ASEAN Member States (AMS). Topics included an introduction to trade mark, design and GI protection and the associated benefits, international protection systems, and the importance of customer service.

ARISE+ IPR supports the creation of an ASEAN IPR helpdesk, which coincides with one of the ASEAN IPR Action Plan 2016-2025’s strategic goals. The project and its stakeholders have envisaged the ASEAN IPR Helpdesk as a one-stop online service that will assist trade mark and design applicants filing applications in any ASEAN Member State (AMS).

As agreed by the ASEAN Working Group on Intellectual Property Cooperation (AWGIPC) in November 2018, ARISE+ IPR will conduct this feasibility study on setting up an ASEAN trade mark registration system. The project will engage with senior legal experts, who will provide the legal, institutional, and administrative analysis of the ASEAN Member States’ (AMS) national trade mark systems combined with a comparative analysis of regional trade mark systems.

Under the ECAP III Phase II Project (2015), the reference search tool ‘ASEAN IP Case Law’ was developed for officials from the ASEAN IP institutions and judiciary. Currently, the database consists of 151 IP decisions from Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Under this Activity, the ARISE+ IPR project is helping to add new case-law to the database, provide English translations of the case-law summaries and make the database available and easily accessible to the public.