OAPI (African Intellectual Property Organization): OAPI is the main organization that ensures the protection of intellectual property rights in most French-speaking African countries. OAPI includes: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Côte d`Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The Madrid Protocol will enter into force for OAPI member countries on 5 March 2015. It should be noted that the seventeen members of OAPI are not individual members of the Madrid Protocol, so coverage in these countries is only possible by selecting the registration through OAPI and not through separate national registrations. An international treaty that allows a trademark owner to apply for registration in one of the countries. is called the Madrid Protocol. Simply put, the Madrid Protocol is an international treaty designed to simplify the international process for the registration of marks. Filing separate trademark applications with trademark offices in different countries under their different trademark laws and paying a separate fee for each application is a very cumbersome and costly process. Under the Madrid Protocol, an applicant only has to file an international trademark application with his or her national trademark office on the basis of an earlier trademark application or concession and pay only one fee to obtain international trademark protection in several countries. WIPO is updating the list of countries of the Madrid Protocol as more and more countries accede to it, a list of current members of the Madrid Protocol is available on the WIPO website. The Madrid Protocol is an international system for obtaining trademark protection for a number of countries and/or regions through a single application. Protection (an “international registration”) can only be obtained for countries and regions that have joined the system (member countries), and these are listed below. An international law (IR) application must be based on a first national application in one of the member countries; (e.B.

a trade mark application or registration in the EU or the United Kingdom. Applicants may choose to file their IR application at the same time as their national application or at any time thereafter (but within six months if they are to claim priority). A disadvantage of the Madrid system is that any rejection, withdrawal or deletion of the basic application or registration within five years of the date of registration of the international registration will result in the same degree of rejection, revocation or deletion of the international registration. For example, if a basic application covers “clothing, head coverings and shoes” and “head covering” is subsequently removed from the basic application (for whatever reason), “head covering” is also removed from the international application. Therefore, the protection offered by the international registration in each territory of the designated members extends only to “clothing and footwear”. If the basic application as a whole is rejected, the international registration will also be completely rejected. 7) Automatically covers Jersey and also some (but not all) overseas territories of the countries of the European Union. There are differing views as to whether an EU trade mark automatically covers Gibraltar and whether an EU designation can be re-registered in Gibraltar and whether it offers protection.

Does not apply to Northern Cyprus. By performing this search, applicants can estimate the ease or difficulty of registering their marks in the countries they wish to designate in the international application and modify their prosecution strategy accordingly. Applicants also have the opportunity to contact IP bodies and legal experts to help them properly complete their trademark registration The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides a cost-effective individual filing system for obtaining and maintaining trademark registrations in up to 122 member countries. The Madrid Union currently has 106 members covering 122 countries. The Madrid Protocol is a treaty between member countries that allows for a simplified process for filing the international registration of marks. It was founded in 1891 and operates under the Madrid Agreement (1891) and the Madrid Protocol (1989). It is administered by the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”), based in Geneva, Switzerland. As with national applications, trademark holders must indicate the class of goods and services to be covered by the mark, but they must also indicate the territories of interest. All management and maintenance is managed centrally by WIPO, but each designated country gives a mark that exists alone, as does a national trademark application.

A trademark owner may apply for protection in other countries that are members of the Madrid Protocol. To do this, it files a subsequent request for designation, but only after the filing of the international application and the granting of the international registration by WIPO. Since Brazil, Colombia and Mexico had acceded to the Madrid Protocol and applications could be filed in Spanish, it was hoped that other countries, particularly those in Central and South America, almost all of which were Spanish-speaking, would accede to it. Malaysia is also expected to join in the near future. As of November 15, 2019, the Madrid Protocol had 106 members, covering 122 countries representing more than 80% of world trade. Members include three regions that cover multiple countries, as shown below: For trademark owners who wish to register their valuable trademark rights in multiple international jurisdictions, the Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks offers a simple and cost-effective way to protect. The system, centrally administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland, allows trademark owners to designate up to 110 member states covering 126 countries (including Jamaica as of March 27, 2022) through a single procedure, using a single language and paying only one set of fees. .