Afro-IP thanks Zimbabwe IP expert Chris Kimberley and Thomas Seremani of Zimbabwean law firm Honey & Blanckenberg for this update:
"Difficulties are being faced with ZIPO [Zimbabwe Intellectual Property Office] at present particularly as regards the fees which they are charging for advertising applications in the Trade Marks Journal. Having for 5 months failed to issue any proof advertisement fee forms to us, calling for payment of advertisement fees, a few days ago these suddenly resurfaced but ZIPO was purporting to charge about 10 times the advertisement cost which they disburse to a company called Printflow which publishes the journals. Resistance to this type of excessive overcharging has been verbally indicated to a senior ZIPO official and we hope that ZIPO will see sense and revise its fees significantly downwards to recover only its disbursement to Printflow. Alternatively, a suggestion has been made for ZIPO to consider issuing the Journals in-house which would be a cheaper alternative. We hope for a soon resolution of this hurdle."
A quick sniff around this news morsel reveals that the Zimbabwean government has an interest in Printflow as disclosed on their Ministry if Finance website "Companies in which the Ministry has a shareholding".
