By Madrid (Marks) Notification No. 203: Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks, WIPO informs us of the accession by the African Intellectual Property Organization (a.k.a. OAPI) to the Madrid Protocol.
This accession is made subject to two declarations. First
* in accordance with Article 5(2)(d) of the Madrid Protocol (1989), under Article 5(2)(b) of the Protocol, the time limit of one year to exercise the right to notify a refusal of protection referred to in Article 5(2)(a) thereof is replaced by 18 months and under Article 5(2)(c) of the said Protocol, when a refusal of protection may result from an opposition to the granting of protection, such refusal may be notified to the International Bureau after the expiry of the 18-month time limit; andThe Madrid Protocol (1989) will enter into force, with respect to the 17-state African Intellectual Property Organization, on March 5, 2015.
* in accordance with Article 8(7)(a) of the Madrid Protocol (1989), OAPI, in connection with each international registration in which it is mentioned under Article 3ter of the said Protocol, and in connection with the renewal of any such international registration, wants to receive, instead of a share in the revenue produced by the supplementary and complementary fees, an individual fee.
This blogger notes that the English-speaking Africans may be having some fun at the expense of their French cousins. If you conduct a Google search of the words "African Intellectual Property Organization" -- ie OAPI -- the first search result is the website of the Anglophone "Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organisation" (ARIPO). Does any reader have an explanation ... ?
2 comments
Write commentsA touch of search engine optimization, perhaps?
ReplyRegarding the Google results: There are probably plenty more pages in English linking to ARIPO than OAPI, hence higher PageRank, and since both names contain the words in OAPI (with a minor difference Africa/African), if you search for those words without quotation marks meaning the order of the words isn’t significant, you’ll get ARIPO first. If you use quotation marks to mark that the order of the words is significant, you should get OAPI first (I certainly do).
Reply