Training on examining patents in Africa

The Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation Project in Africa (AfrIPI), the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) are holding the Module B curriculum training of the ARIPO Patent Examination Training (ARPET) programme.

The meeting started Monday and ends on July 14.

The training is taking place at Hotel Verde in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

A patent is an exclusive right granted by countries to protect inventions, whether products or processes, that offer a new technical solution or provide a new process. It lasts for a limited period of time, usually 20 years. In return for this limited monopoly, the patent owner must disclose the invention to the public in the patent application. A patent is a territorial right and takes effect within the national boundaries of the country for which it was granted.

In order to get patent protection, inventors must file a patent application.

A patent protection application can be filed for in the following 19 ARIPO Member States: Botswana, Kingdom of Eswatini, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Kingdom of Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

ARIPO is mandated to grant patents on behalf of the Harare Protocol Contracting States under the Harare Protocol on Patents and Industrial Designs provisions.

The Harare Protocol was adopted on 10 December 1982 in Harare, Zimbabwe, and entered into force in 1984.

AfrIPI is a pan-African project that aims to support the European Union in creating, administering, utilising, protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights across Africa.

Under the ARPET programme, AfrIPI, ARIPO and the EPO have joined forces to train patent examiners from the national patent offices of ARIPO Member and Observer States.

The training will aims to develop the knowledge and skills of patent examiners of ARIPO Member and Observer States, specifically Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Although empowered through their national laws to provide search and examination of patent application services, most ARIPO Member States and Observer States lack the capacity, knowledge and skills to perform timely and high-quality searches and examinations of patent applications for their local constituents.

Therefore, the knowledge and skills of these examiners must be developed through continuous training on patent search and examination topics to improve their skill base, substantive capacities and efficiencies.

The EPO and ARIPO launched the ARPET programme in September 2021 through the introduction of Module A training.

This year, the ARPET programme will focus on Module B – Advanced Patent Examination.

Under Module B, participants will be divided into three groups: Engineering, Biotechnology/Chemistry and Portuguese-speaking examiners.

Their training, based on competency-based framework and curriculum to train examiners, covers topics such as conducting timely, high-quality searches and examinations of local applications, implementing international and EPO procedures, and second filing practices, among others.

“Through the ARIPO Patent Examination Training program, AfrIPI aims to support the development and strengthening of patent search and examination in Africa.

“The aim is to be achieved by improving the capacity, knowledge and skills of patent examiners in Africa so that they are better equipped to improve their skill base and substantive capacities and efficiencies and to carry out patent examinations in accordance with international best practices,” said Ms Beata Suwala, AfrIPI representative.

“ARPET training aims to build capacity of the participating Member States’ Intellectual Property Offices in conducting patent search and examination based on Patent Cooperation Treaty standards.

The training will also build the capacity of Research and Development (R&D) institutions in conducting patent searches. In R&D institutions, the patent searches are a necessity in exploitation of patents both as a vehicle of protection and a source of information because patent databases contain more than 80% of all technical information worldwide, and this information is never published in any other form,” added Said Ramadhan, the Representative of The Director General of ARIPO.

“EPO is also eager to ensure sustainability of this programme and the examination systems in the countries.

“In view of that, apart from empowering you to become competent in patent search and examination, but enable you, in turn, to teach others what you have learnt.

“So, we look forward still to the train-the-trainer course that will follow this module, so that you can, also support local innovators more effectively, when it comes to protecting and commercialising their inventions, which is a key objective of the co-operation partners, as well as a key component of the EPO’s strategic plan,” stated Dr Fernando António dos Santos, EPO Representative.