The functioning of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) for industrial design registration: realities and possibilities

This chapter focuses on the functioning of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) under the Harare Protocol and the Harare Protocol Regulations as they relate to the registration of industrial designs. The chapter explains the industrial design system in ARIPO, evaluates the performance of ARIPO under the Harare Protocol and the Harare Protocol Regulations and in the light of the Intellectual Property Protocol under the African Union’s (AU) African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement, explores some future possibilities for ARIPO’s industrial design system. In doing this, this chapter relies on a desktop review of the legal developments at ARIPO and comparison of those developments with ARIPO’s trends and statistics. These trends and statistics were largely supported by design and patent attorneys and firms who shared with the author their experience on ARIPO’s design system and procedures.