As businesses and individuals prepare for the year 2021, our analyst has discovered that profit and non-profit oriented establishments have filed a total of 1,889 trademark applications in Nigeria. This is gleaned from the database of the Nigerian Law Intellectual Property Watch, an organisation that curates and publishes trademark applications in the country.
NLIP notes that its database is “for information purposes only and is not the official register for trademarks in Nigeria. The official register is kept at the Registrar’s office in Abuja, Nigeria.” Looking at the applications, our analyst discovered that both Nigerian owned and non-Nigerian owned businesses and non-governmental organisations submitted applications as at October, 2020 [for the year].
Information has it that “trademark is the most active Intellectual Property Rights in sub-Sahara Africa most especially in Kenya, Ghana, Gambia, Nigeria, and South Africa. This is the area of IPRs which had witnessed numerous applications from nationals of the region.”
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This position is highly supported with the preliminary outcomes of our ongoing analysis of patent and intellectual property rights in Africa.
We have discovered how businesses of the Africa origin submitted little trademark and patent applications between 2017 and 2019. The preliminary results also indicate that South Africa is better in the area of patent and intellectual property protection than most African countries we analysed. The country demonstrated the leadership through its strong policies and institutional framework for the enforcement of intellectual property and patent rights.
To increase innovation ecosystem, our analyst notes that African leaders need to ensure sustainable patent and intellectual property protection. This is highly imperative in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and other countries where failure to file patent and trademark is reducing innovation output.
Exhibit 1: Link Between Intellectual Property Protection and Innovation Output (2017-2019)
