As of 13 December 2021, the Internal Trade Development Authority of Egypt (ITDA) has made its trade mark data available to the TMview search tool.
With ITDA on board of TMview, the tool now contains data from 76 participating offices.
With the addition of more than 131.500 trade marks from ITDA, TMview now provides information and access to more than 102,7 million trade marks in total.
On 30 November the AfrIPI Project team presented the Annual Work Plan to the Steering Committee. The AWP2 will be carried out from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022 and will consist of 4 main objectives: Promoted international agreements in the area of IPR & AfCFTA negotiations, Strengthened national & regional IP institutions, networks, and tools, Strengthened capacities of MSMEs/ productive sector on IP and Support to AU Continental strategy for GIs.
On 30 November and 1 December AfrIPI is organising a training for trademark examiners. This training aims to showcase practical organisational measures to manage the timeframes of examination (regional and international trademarks), opposition and ownership claim procedures, to build on the practice of splitting the application, and to share practical experience on the assessment of the distinctiveness of a trademark (all types of trademarks including so-called non-traditional trademarks).
Mr Timo Olkkonen, the EU ambassador to Zimbabwe, met with ARIPO (for the second time) and the AfrIPI team (for the first time).
The meeting led to a rich and fruitful discussion, particularly about geographical indications, one of the pillars of the AfrIPI project.
The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) is organising a Regional Conference on Geographical Indications (GIs) in collaboration with AfrIPI (African Intellectual Property and Innovation) from 10 to 12 November 2021 in Harare, Zimbabwe. The objective of the workshop is to define a strategy amongst the ARIPO Member States with regards to setting up a Geographical Indication (GI) legal framework on a regional or national level.
The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) is organising a virtual Regional Workshop on the Arusha Protocol in collaboration with the Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation Project (AfrIPI) on 9 November 2021. The workshop is aimed at Plant Variety Protection Experts in ARIPO Member States.
The main objectives of this workshop are the following:
On 21 October, the ‘Africa IP SME Helpdesk’ will be launched in Rome, under the auspices of the EU-African SME Summit 2021. From this date, EU businesses will be able to find detailed and practical information on African intellectual property matters at the Helpdesk’s online hub, and address specific questions to the Helpdesk.