H S & Co. is privileged to have a
partner who is an accredited OAPI Industrial Property Attorney. We represent clients worldwide in the
African Intellectual Property Organization, commonly known and called by its
French acronym, OAPI, grouping 17 west and central African countries to wit: Benin,
Burkina Faso, Cameroon (headquarters), Central African Republic, The Comoros,
Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry,
Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Tchad and Togo, with a total population of
over 170 million. An Intellectual Property registered in OAPI is automatically
covered and protected in all 17 member countries. The IP rights which are currently protected by OAPI
include: trademarks & services marks, patents of invention &
certificates of addition, utility models, industrial designs, trade names and
geographical indications. The following will soon enter the regime of protection:
topography of integrated circuits and protection of new plant varieties. We equally register copyrights and related rights with
the specialized copyright corporations in Cameroon. Yet, we register domain
names with ANTIC. The firm has a
network of associates worldwide through whom we represent a large empire of
foreign IP owners in OAPI. But again, because we are listed in all the possible
directories one can imagine, individual IP owners also contact us on a more
than regular basis. The rate at which our IP portfolio is growing is such that,
we are afraid, we might have to, in the very near future, create a new,
different, structure to manage it.
