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Africa and Middle East
Introduction
EPO activities in Africa and the Middle East date back to the early days of the Office. The EPO launched a dedicated project for the region in July 2000. Organisations which have been associated with the project include the national intellectual property (IP) offices of various EPO member states, in particular France, Germany, Portugal and the UK, as well as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Objectives/strategy
The objectives of the project can be summarised as follows:
- supporting the development of the region’s national offices so that they can properly apply their own patent regulations and work in a more efficient manner;
- making patent information readily available to IP offices and the general public;
- promoting co-operation and synergies within and between the sub-regions.
Partners
The EPO holds valid co-operation agreements with the following partners:
- Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle (OAPI), with its headquarters in Yaounde, Cameroon;
- Academy of Scientific Research & Technology - Egyptian Patent Office (EgPO), with its headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.
The EPO also organises co-operation activities with Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria and Lebanon.
Milestones
The following projects have been carried out in recent years:
- developing and installing a fully automated system for administering procedures at the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO);
- developing and installing hardware and software for scanning and indexing documents in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, South Africa, Syria, Tunisia, and the Regional Offices of ARIPO and OAPI;
- electronically publishing patent data on CD-ROMs for OAPI;
- integrating OAPI into esp@cenet, the EPO’s online access to its patent database.
Training:
- In 2006, the EPO’s European Patent Academy organised seminars for over 30 participants from the region;
- annual study cycles at Centre d’Etudes Internationales de la Propriété Industrielle (CEIPI) for selected candidates;
- supporting training events at regional training centres.
Regular events
Large-scale public events, including regional conferences and forums, facilitate political and technical dialogue and the exchange of views and experience.
The most important of these events is the EPO Regional Forum on Industrial Property for Africa and the Middle East. The first Forum, held in Casablanca in April 2001, was followed by a second event in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2003. The third Forum was held in 2005, in Dakar, as the EPO Regional Forum for Africa.
Parallel to these initiatives, conferences for the Arab region were held in October 2002 in Beirut and June 2004 in Cairo. The next one is scheduled for 2007.
The EPO also regularly organises awareness seminars in the ARIPO and OAPI regions, as well as in the Portuguese-speaking countries, and recently in Ethiopia.
Contacts
Guy Patton
Project Leader
Tel.: +49 89 2399 5281
Fax: +49 89 2399 1991
gpatton@epo.org
Françoise Ohl
Project Assistant
Tel.: +49 89 2399 5231
Fax: +49 89 2399 1991
fohl@epo.org
Links
Project for Africa and Middle East (PAME) website