Staff from the Office of Administrator and Registrar General (OARG) are on a nationwide tour, creating awareness about Intellectual Property Rights protection in Sierra Leone.
The team, while in Kenema, made several engagements with stakeholders, community right holders, and the media in passing out information to the public about patent, industrial design, Trademarks, Copy Right among others
In one of the engagements at the SLBC conference hall along Maxwell Khobe Street, the head of section, Yama Isata Koroma ESQ, a Senior Registration Officer at the Office of Administrator and Registrar General stated that the OARG is mandated to do registration and Administration of intellectual property rights, business registration, convayance, conduct civil wedding among others.
Intellectual property she went on basically has to do with the original human creation, for e.g, invention, logo, poem, music, etc.
When you register your Intellectual property right, you have the exclusive right to make it, use it, sell it, export it etc, meaning you have monopolized it, no body has the right to use it without the right holder’s consent.
If some one use it without the right owner’s consent he has done infringement, Under the Patent & Industrial Design, Act 2012, section 72 makes provision for civil remedies which includes damages, injunction and any other remedy that the court deem fit and section 73 for criminal remedies. The patent law provides 60 million old Leones and one year imprisonment under patent. The law make provision for six months grace period for inventors that have published their inventions before registration to register for it not to lose their novelty
Ibrahim Sam Johnson from OARG told Journalists that Copy Right is the right over what you copy. It is also referred to as Authors right adding Journalists are creators of Copy right too. He, therefore ,called on the media practitioners to do their constitutional role in ensuring that the messages of OARG with regards to intellectual property in general and copyright to be specific go far and wide in the region in the interest of the general masses. The team for the nation wide tour will visit Bo in the Southern region, Portloko and Makeni in the Northern Region and back to Freetown the Western Area
Muminatu Jalloh spoke about Trademark, which she described as a Distinctive sign that is capable of distinguishing the goods and services from one enterprise to that of another enterprise. Trademark deals with goods and services. The goods are for the products, and the services are what you render to the people.
You can brand a product by giving it a unique name that will differentiate it from others.
In the case of services, for example, there are a lot of radio stations existing, but one will prefer the media coverage of SLBC than other stations.
When you come to register your trademark, the office will first do what is known as availability search wherein we check from our data base to determine whether the product or services you intend to register has been registered before by another person .If not
We will do substantive examination and formality examination. If all criteria are met, we will take it to government printers,in the form of notices for publication.
It will then come out as received in the gazette for three months, and if there are no objections, it will be sent back the government printing for second gazette as accepted from which a certificate will be issued .
Trademark is territoriality to a country, and the time frame of registration is ten years.After every ten years, it will be liable for. renewal.
The trademark Act of 2014 9(8) makes provision for a fine of 100 million Leones or 7 years imprisonment in
Section 28 for offenses relating to forgery
Someone found guilty of applying a false trademark description to goods can be fined sixty million Leones or five years imprisonment or both
It is worth noting that a registered trademark gives you the owners exclusive rights to use .
A trademark that has been officially registered is legally protected, and you are protected against others from using the exact same mark or similar mark without your authorization or consent
A well maintained trademark can, in the long run, build your brand and become an asset to your organization, which can enable you to grow your business through licensing into others .
It brings economic values and several benefitsIt brings about economic growth in a way when someone registers a trademark that business automatically pays tax to the government and that money paid will be used by the government to improve on social amenities.
Also ,such businesses in most occasions, employed Sierra Leoneans who, in turn, are able to take care of their families through the salaries they received. Hence, improving the standard of living of its workers.
