Intellectual property and OAPI filings
Intellectual property in Cameroon is not registered nationally. Protection is obtained through the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI), whose headquarters are in Yaounde and whose register covers seventeen States as a single unitary right.
OAPI was created by the Bangui Agreement of 2 March 1977, revised in 1999 and again in 2015, the 2015 revision entering into force on 14 November 2020. There are no separate national trademark or patent registers in the member States. One filing gives protection in all seventeen, which for a business trading across Francophone Africa is a considerable simplification. An application may be filed directly with OAPI or through a national liaison office, which must transmit it within five days.
Member States
Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo.
Our work includes
- Availability searches and filing strategy
- Trademark, patent, utility model, industrial design and trade name applications
- Renewals, assignments and the recording of licenses
- Opposition and cancellation proceedings before OAPI
- Infringement and unfair competition proceedings before the Cameroonian courts
- Seizure of counterfeit goods and customs measures at the Port of Douala
- Copyright, and relations with the collective management societies
- Technology transfer, licensing and franchise agreements
Speak with an attorney
Enonchong Chambers meets with clients at its offices at 305 rue Alfred Saker in Akwa, Douala. Correspondence in English or French is answered in the language it was written in.