Administrative Litigation
This concerns the procedure for opposing and claiming ownership:
These procedures take place before the Director General of OAPI and are based on the principle of adversarial proceedings. The Director General's decision regarding an objection or a claim of ownership may be appealed to the OAPI Higher Appeals Commission, a body composed of magistrates from OAPI member states.
The protection of a trademark through its registration concerns a specific sign for specific products or services which are indicated at the time of filing the trademark; this is the principle of specialty.
To file an objection with the Director General, the person concerned relies on two hypotheses:
The claim procedure can only be initiated in the event that the filing made by a third party is fraudulent, that is to say, that the third party has filed a trademark with the intention of harming.
The success of an action to claim ownership requires that the claimant demonstrate, on the one hand, prior use of the sign and, on the other hand, fraud or violation of a right.
Any objection or claim of ownership must be made within six months of publication. After this period, no objection can be made.
Legal Disputes
These are legal proceedings relating to intellectual property rights. A distinction is made between actions relating to the validity of industrial property titles, namely:
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The utility model registration certificate |
Read Article 34, Annex II, which lists the cases in which a utility model can be considered null |
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The trademark registration certificate |
Trademark registration is an administrative act that does not bind the courts hearing a dispute concerning its validity. Trademark registration does not constitute a guarantee of validity; an interested third party may challenge the trademark's validity in court, either directly or, more commonly, by filing a counterclaim. |
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The Commercial Name |
The invalidity of the trade name is pronounced under the provisions of Article 14 Annex V of the Bangui Agreement. |
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Plant variety certificate |
Article 40 of Annex X of the AB provides for the cancellation by the court of the plant variety certificate if it is established that the variety was not: new or distinct at the date of filing of the application; the variety was not homogeneous or the plant variety certificate was issued to a person who was not entitled to it. |
Then there are two main actions on which intellectual property litigation is generally based:
