Trademark registration Togo

In Togo, trademark protection cannot be granted on the basis of its use. Only going through a legal procedure can give you the exclusive rights to a trademark. If you want to register a trademark in Togo, you should contact the OAPI, the Organization Africaine de la Proprieté Intellectuelle, for such registration. In principle, you can apply for trademark protection for all seventeen member states that are part of this organisation: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Comoros, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo. Registration in multiple classes is possible via the OAPI.

OAPI covers most African Francophone countries and was established with the Bangui Agreement on March 2, 1977. The organization aims to promote cooperation between member states and the sharing of common objectives in the field of intellectual property. The most distinguishing feature and advantage of the OAPI is that a single trademark registration is automatically in effect in all member states, without the possibility to designate only a few countries. Member States do not have national intellectual property laws. The OAPI is a member state of the Madrid Protocol. Extension of international registration is therefore possible within this territory.

If you want to register your brand name in Togo, it is advisable to first perform a thorough trademark search before submitting the actual application. Although this step is not mandatory, it does increase the chance that your application will be accepted by the organization. Then you submit your application. The OAPI conducts a formal review, a trademark distinctiveness review and a trademark search. If your trademark is determined as insufficiently distinctive, you can be compensated for this if it has acquired it through its active use.

If you successfully complete the test described above, you are one step away from registration. Every brand you want to register in Togo will be published in the official trade gazette. This is to inform third parties of your intention and to give them the opportunity to object, for example because they believe that this infringes the rights they have acquired. The opposition period has a duration of six months and starts from the date of publication.

If you are going to register a brand name in Togo, then this concerns a goods mark or a service mark. In Togo, words, logos, slogans, mottos, names, letters, numbers, symbols, emblems, shapes, designs, parts of packaging, color combinations, animations, figurative elements or combinations thereof, as well as sounds, may be used as a trademark. Examples of figurative elements are, for example, ornaments, images and geometric figures. Usually a trademark that one wants to register in Togo is a 2D trademark. However, 3D trademarks are also allowed.