Although Cape Verde has only a small presence in foreign and regional treaties and conventions, it has only become a signatory to the World Trade Organization Agreement on the trade facets of high-level assets until 2008, its Patent and Trademark Office (ETP) has demonstrated a uniqueness: its rigour with the formalities of filing commercial heritage rights by adding supporting documents.
The form situations for a trademark application in Cape Verde when the applicant is an enterprise are:
Where the applicant is an individual, the form situations are:
In addition to the documents referred to, applicants must complete and submit between 3 and 4 other forms, which repeat precisely the same knowledge, increasing the candidate’s burden.
To date, the practice of the Public Prosecutor’s Office has been to require the submission of all supporting documents at the time of submission, adding notarized certification.Late submission of documents is not accepted; the revision of the form is done at the time of submission, resulting in a wait on the filing date.
However, there are discrepancies between the practice of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the provisions of the Intellectual Property Law.For example, with respect to the precedence document, segment 231 indicates that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has two months after notification to register an authenticated copy of that document; In addition, while the Public Prosecutor’s Office in practice behaves uncompromisingly with respect to the overdue submission of documents, segment 323 of the Act provides that if anomalies are detected after formal examination, applicants will be informed and have the opportunity to respond.within the time limit set out in the notification (the law does not specify any time limit).
The maximum significant difference is that the OTP allows registrars to register only an original and notarized notary force, regardless of the number of trademark applications.The rest of this requirement is welcome as it reduces the document certification fee.
In addition, the covid-19 pandemic has new changes. Due to the physical barriers created through confinement, the ETP has brought transitional measures to facilitate the filing process, namely:
Such measures are still in place when writing this article and work well, a repetition for a more modern classification method.
According to the ETP’s comments, there is the objective of moving to a more fashionable deposit formula and maintaining speed with other African jurisdictions such formulas (e.g. South Africa, Nigeria and the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization), which may allow applicants to register online programs and technicians for further and faster review.In fact, the Cape Verde PTO is presenting a segment for online installations on its website, which may be the first seed of this modernization.
Given the efforts in this area, it’s only a matter of time before the virtual repository reaches Cape Verde.
For information, contact: