Kenya Industrial Property Institute (KIPI) whose mandate is to implement the Trademarks Act Cap 506 that deals with registration of Trade and Service marks, has issued a notice to the owners of over 2000 trademarks to renew them.
Section 23 of the Trade Act stipulates that registration of a trademark in Kenya shall expire after a period of ten (10) years. The Act allows the proprietor of a registered trademark to make an application for renewal of the trademark.
Rule 65 of the Trade Mark Rules provides that where no application for renewal of a registered trade mark is received upon expiry of the ten year period, the Registrar of Trade Marks shall notify the proprietor of this fact. Where no application for renewal of the registered trade mark is received within a period of sixty (60) days from the date of the notice for renewal by the Registrar, rule 67 of the Trade Mark Rules requires the Registrar of Trade Marks to publish this fact.
Firms from diverse sectors i.e. food, manufacturing, tech, etc are listed in the document.
Some of the notable firms that have been listed include: tobacco manufacturer British American Tobacco (BAT), Philips, Kiguru Foods, the manufacturer of Softa soft drinks, Bayer, Smithkline Beecham, Cadbury Schweppes, Proctor & Gamble, Bata, LG Electronics, Kodak, Timsales, Pfizer, Jonson & Johnson and many more.
Some of the trademarks are over 100 years old, for example, like Durham Duplex Razor company that registered their logo on 16/10/1919.
KIPI has requested the respective firms to renew their trademarks within 30 days from 15th June 2020. If they fail, the trade mark will be removed from the register of trademarks.
The full list, downloadable in PDF format can be found here
Featured image courtesy of: http://www.findglocal.com
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