USPTO and ARIPO Sign Bilateral Cooperation Agreement

    By Donald Zuhn --

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced today that it had signed a Workplan for Bilateral Cooperation on intellectual property issues with the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO).  The Workplan, which will serve to promote the development of effective intellectual property systems in ARIPO member countries, was signed by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property David Kappos and Director General of ARIPO Dr. Gift Huggins Sibanda on Thursday in Geneva.  ARIPO is an intergovernmental organization consisting of 16 African countries that operates as a central intellectual property filing system.  The USPTO press release noted that the Workplan would strengthen the bilateral relationship between ARIPO and USPTO and increase public awareness about the importance of intellectual property issues.  Under the Workplan, the USPTO will also train ARIPO patent and trademark examiners to further develop their technical expertise and capacity to respond to increasing workloads.

Comments

[MaxDrei]

You report "Under the Workplan, the USPTO will also train ARIPO patent examiners to ....respond to increasing workloads". One is lost in admiration. Who better than the USPTO to train other Patent Offices how to manage the workload. The Chinese? Surely not.

I wonder, are there any further such bilateral Workplans in the pipeline?

Come to think of it, why isn't the EPO in there, helping the Africans?