Douala, Cameroon Leaders in OAPI Trademark Matters
SCP Global Africa IP
Immeuble Ndeke & Fils, Apt 109 Suite 20-24Rue des Manguiers, Bali, PO Box 15805 Akwa
Douala
Cameroon
+237 99933447
+237 33438791
www.scpglobalafrica.com
Contact Maître Henry Feh
Published Articles Law Firm Overview
SCP Global Africa IP, abridged of Société Civile Professionelle Global Africa Intellectual Property Business Consulting, is an Intellectual Property business only consulting firm. While a majority of its team of experienced IP experts are specialized in Industrial Property practice, some work only on copyright.
We represent clients worldwide in the African Intellectual Property Organization, commonly known and called by its French acronym, OAPI, grouping 16 west and central African countries, namely: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon (headquarters), Central African Republic, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Tchad and Togo, with a total population of over 100 million. A trademark registered in OAPI is automatically covered and protected in all 16 member countries. We also register copyrights with the specialized copyright corporations in Cameroon. Yet, we register domain names with the Cameroon Telecommunications Corporation, abridged CAMTEL.
Because we do only IP practice, our team is a rare breed of attorneys (with deep specialized knowledge of things) in the OAPI sub-region. There is no one attorney in the firm who is allowed the liberty to confuse his head with an impressive knowledge of all of IP law. While they are all however proud of a global knowledge of IP law in general, each practitioner specializes in one aspect of the practice, this in order to master it with profundity. Because of this rather high level of specialization, our firm is reputed to be one of the sub-region’s most up-to-the-minute OAPI licensed IP Attorneys with a cutting edge.
With a high reputation for expediency and expeditiousness, SCP Global Africa IP has developed a modern client friendly practice that utilizes state-of-the-art technology.
With OAPI License n° 0090/OAPI/DG/SCAJ, the firm was established by IP practitioners with acknowledged skills and expertise in all the branches of Intellectual Property practice. After long years of experience in various law firms in Cameroon, the present partners came together to incorporate this moral person, SCP Global Africa IP, in order to parry the problem inherent in the fleeting nature of physical personality in business formation. The firm is thus a partnership with a duration of 99 years and more. With this, the firm will continue to represent our clients beyond the short life time of each individual partner. Plus, with many partners, someone will always be there with a vested interest to attend the client (who will remain king until further notice).
To let our clients draw the benefit of sublime and sterling quality services, the firm is specialized in IP and only IP practice. This has earned us the reputation for expeditiousness and expediency. It has also come to guarantee the efficiency and effectiveness of filings at OAPI. All the applications filed by this IP forwarding and confirming house have consolidated the rights of our clients to their satisfaction. So far our client-base is Africa, Middle East, Far East, Europe, Asia and the Americas.
SCP Global Africa IP operates from an accessible location with offices in Douala, approved by the Cameroon Ministry of Industry, Mines and Technological Development as more than adequate for IP practice. Here, your rather important documents in our keeping are safe.
We have a very rich library (updated regularly) containing all the IP materials required for satisfactory practice. To enable us monitor our client’s IP rights closely, the watch service of the firm has a standing order of the OAPI Official Gazette which publishes every registration.
The firm’s attorneys are accurate in their responses and time-efficient. Matters handled by us do not suffer undue delays. Plus, we do a minute-by-minute reporting to our clients.
Languages: English and French. Since these are also the official languages of OAPI, we are able to receive instructions in either language and communicate with our clients in intelligible form.
Practice Areas
Additional Practice Areas: Opposition & Restoration; Geographical Indications; Utility Models; Searches; Industrial Designs; Renewals; Priority Claims; Extension of Rights; Recordals; Investigations & Raids; Assignment & Licensing; Change of Name and/or Address; Monitoring & Watch Service
Practice Areas Description
SCP Global Africa IP practices in the following practice areas:- Trade Marks & Service Marks
Section 2(1) of schedule III of the Bangui Accord of 1977 as amended in 1999 provides that “ Any visible sign … to distinguish the good or service of whatsoever enterprise shall be considered a trademark or service mark in particular, surnames by themselves, or in a distinctive form, special, arbitrary or fanciful designations, the characteristic form or container of a product, labels, wrappings, emblems, prints, stamps, seals, vignettes, borders, combinations or arrangements of colors, drawings, relief, letters, numbers, devices, pseudonyms…”
A mark may thus be defined to include, but not limited to: a device, brand, heading, label, ticket, name, signature, word, letter, numeral, smell, etc, or any combination of these.
- Patents of Invention
An invention is a technical solution to a problem. Section 1(1) of schedule I of the Bangui Accord of 1977 as amended in 1999 provides that: “A new invention involving an inventive step and which is industrially applicable may be the subject of a patent.” At OAPI all patent applications are examined for novelty on world scale.
- Opposition & Restoration
Since search of anteriority is not mandatory in OAPI, one IP right may happen to be registered in the name of more than one owner. In such a case, the owner of the registration claiming priority has the liberty to file a memorandum of opposition against the other(s) within six months of their publication in the OAPI Official Gazette, a quarterly. The organization forwards this memorandum to the applicant who, according to the principle of fair hearing, also has the right to file a counter submission within three months renewable once.
The attorneys of SCP Global Africa IP are known for their petitions and defense before the OAPI Opposition Commission and the Higher Appeals Commission. All we require are the facts as they are and we shall formulate your case.
- Geographical Indications
This is an indicator that certain products have a territorial or regional or local origin which is certain. All the producers in that region are allowed to use the geographical indication. For instance “Mountain Honey ” can be used by all honey farmers in the Cameroon mountain area. So a geographical indication is a place of origin. But again this is only in the case where the quality, reputation or other peculiar characteristic of the product is attributable essentially to this geographical origin.
- Unfair Competition
Article 1(a) Schedule VIII of the Bangui Accord of 1977 as amended in 1999 provides that an act of unfair competition shall be constituted by any act or practice which, in the course of industrial or commercial activities, is contrary to honest practice. Such acts would include but not limited to:
* Generation (or likelihood of generation) of confusion with another’s enterprise or activities
* Acts damaging to (or likelihood of misleading the public) with respect to an enterprise or its activities
* Disparaging (or likelihood of disparaging) another's enterprise or activities
* Acts leading to the disclosure of another’s confidential information to third parties without the consent of that other
* Acts liable to disorganize a competing enterprise, its market or the market of the profession concerned
- Copyright
The works pertaining to copyright in Cameroon are such as literary, artistic and scientific works. In our jurisdiction there are different civil corporations managing these different aspects of copyright. Thus we would apply to the appropriate corporation to obtain the copyright for poems, novels, music, paintings, photographic works, sculpture and cinematographic works. We also apply and obtain copyright for related rights such as the interpretation of interpreter artists, the execution of executor artists, phonograms, radio transmissions and translations.
- Utility Models
An invention provides a technical solution to a problem. The utility model (or small patent of invention, as it is fondly called) is a right conferred to protect an invention. Instruments of work or parts thereof or objects, in as much as they are useful for work or any usage for which it is intended, thanks to a new configuration, arrangement or disposition and which is susceptible to industrial application is a utility model.
- Searches
One of the hurdles on the way of intellectual property registration is that trade marks can clash. Well, once you are not sure of the originality of the mark of your new product or service, you may choose to eliminate the chance of your mark being opposed after registration by asking for a search of anteriority to be conducted a priori. At OAPI, it takes only 10 clear days for the search report to get back to the applicant.
- Industrial Designs
Section 2(1) of schedule IV of the Bangui Accord of 1977 as amended in 1999 provides that an Industrial Design/Model is “… any new design or any new three-dimensional form or any industrial object which differs from like objects either by a distinct and recognizable form giving it an aspect of novelty, or by one or several external effects giving a new and distinct appearance.”
- Renewals
IP rights are temporal rights. So they do expire with time. In effect section 19 of schedule III of the Bangui accord of 1977 as amended in 1999 provides that “the registration of a trademark is valid only for ten years with effect from the date of filing; but the ownership of a trade mark may be maintained indefinitely upon successive renewals every ten years”. Renewals are also the object of recordation.
- Domain Names
The Cameroon Telecommunication Corporation has made the .cm domain available for registration in the name of both national and non-national physical and moral persons.
- Priority Claims
It is trite knowledge that IP rights are territorial rights. So one’s trade mark for instance is protected only within the territory (country or region) wherein it is registered. Should a trademark already be registered and protected in another jurisdiction, the owner upon applying for registration in OAPI may (advisedly) claim priority so the registration, rather then having effect from the date of filing in OAPI, shall have effect from the date of the prior registration. This is very tactical, provided the application is filed within six months of the prior registration.
- Extension of Rights
Since the adhesion of Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau and Mali (in 1998) and Equatorial Guinea (in 2000) to OAPI, IP rights existing in these new adherents prior to their adhesion may be extended to the organization. By the same token, IP rights existing in OAPI before these four countries were admitted may also be extended to these new members. There was of course a deadline for these extensions. But a 2003 OAPI Board of Directors meeting resolved that late extension applications shall be admissible upon payment of a late filing fee which was moderately fixed at less than 100 Euros per application. Extensions are also the object of recordation.
- Trade Names
A trade name is the denomination by which a commercial, industrial, artisanal or agricultural establishment is known and called. It is an important component of the goodwill of the firm qua business concern.
- Recordals
OAPI keeps a special register containing the details as to the identity of each IP the organization registers. After filing the initial application, any subsequent development in the status of the registration requires a recordal in this register. Such developments would include, change of name and/or address of owner, assignment, licensing or subscription of the IP, renewal of rights, extension to new adherent(s), etc.
- Litigation
SCP Global Africa IP retains the services of trial lawyers with all the forensic skills at their disposal. They engage in litigation proceedings before the OAPI disputes commissions comprising the Opposition Commission and the Higher Appeals Commission (appropriate for matters of cancellation of patent, trade mark or other IP right, appeals against decisions of the commission and complaints about these decisions, etc.) as well as before the courts of common law (in the case of suits concerning trade name, charges of unfair competition or nullity). We also vindicate claims related to infringement of rights connected with the protection of intellectual property.
- Investigations & Raids
Protection against unfair competition under schedule VIII of the Bangui Accord of 1977 as amended in 1999 is essentially a civil action. When the client alerts us that another person is, in the course of his industrial or commercial activities, doing any of the following, the first step we take is to open an investigation with the aid of a sheriff’s officer who would determine and have the offense on record:
* generating confusion
* damaging the image or reputation
* misleading the public
* disparaging the enterprise
* disclosing confidential information
* disorganizing the enterprise or the market
- Assignment & Licensing
The rights attached to an IP may be transferred in total or in part (or simply subscribed) to a third party who becomes the new owner or possessor as the case may be. In each case, a recordal has to be done in the special register of the IP in question.
- Change of Name and/or Address
In IP law and practice, a registration is necessarily accompanied by the full name and address of the owner. Without the name and address, such registration is null and void ab initio. Indeed a proper trade mark officer would not even accept the application. This means the name and address of the owner is an integral part of the IP right. So any change of name and/or address of the owner must be followed by a recordal in the special register if the IP must continue to have effect in OAPI.
- Monitoring & Watch Service
To apply for a search of anteriority before filing for registration in OAPI is not mandatory. It can thus be imagined how frequently trade marks clash in our jurisdiction. So to protect the IP rights of our worldwide clientele, the watch service of the firm maintains a standing order of the OAPI Official Gazette, published at least every quarter, containing all registrations. We comb it painstakingly, looking out for IP registrations with (not only a possibility of but) a likelihood of confusion with our clients’ registrations. From this activity, opposition may ensue, leading to investigations, raids, culminating in court action for unfair competition.
- IP Consultancy and Management
The organic law governing IP rights in the OAPI sub-region is the Bangui Accord of 1977 as amended in 1999. On the basis of our mastery of this rather slim document of 225 pages, we advise our clients on IP law in general and on specific questions if and when they arise.
Once issued a power of attorney to register an IP in OAPI, we remain the administrative contact for the right in question. In this capacity we manage the property in the right for its duration of validity and eventually advise as to renewals. In the meantime we ensure the payment of annuities to maintain our clients’ patents of invention.
Partners
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Mr. James Achuo
Attorney Intellectual Property |
Mr. Ivo Dogo
Attorney Intellectual Property |
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Mr. Henry Feh
Attorney Intellectual Property |
Ms. Honorine Fotso
Attorney Intellectual Property |
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Mr. Eugene Gana
Attorney Intellectual Property |
Ms. Marilyn Keng Nasang
Attorney Intellectual Property |
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Mr. Dickson Mokom
Attorney Intellectual Property |
Mr. Conrad Ndikum
Attorney Intellectual Property |
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Mr. Graham Yumbi
Attorney Intellectual Property |
Representative Clients
Cameroon: | United States: |
More Information on SCP Global Africa IP
Douala, Cameroon OAPI Trademark Law FirmIP Lawyers in Douala, Cameroon
Douala, Cameroon Trade Marks & Service Marks Lawyer
Patent Lawyers in Douala, Cameroon
Douala, Cameroon Unfair Competition Lawyers
Copyright Lawyers in Douala, Cameroon
Domain Names Lawyers in Douala, Cameroon
Douala, Cameroon IP Consultancy and Management
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