Kenya: Patent

The Kenya Industrial Property Institute has introduced a digital transformation in intellectual property services by launching an online filing system. This new platform enables applicants to electronically file patents, industrial designs, and utility models while processing payments through a streamlined digital interface. The modernization initiative represents a significant step toward improving efficiency and accessibility in Kenya's IP administration.

Kenya is poised to transform its intellectual property landscape through the consolidation of three separate regulatory bodies into a single unified authority. The Kenya Intellectual Property Bill 2026 proposes sweeping reforms that would streamline IP administration, establish a specialized tribunal, and create comprehensive oversight of patents, trademarks, copyright, and anti-counterfeiting measures under one roof.

The administration of intellectual property in Kenya is currently fragmented. The Kenya Industrial Property Institute (“KIPI”) administers patents, trade marks, utility models and industrial designs...

Kenya's Anti-Counterfeit Authority has made it compulsory to record IP rights on all imported goods (not services) in Kenya by no later than 1 July 2022.

In 2008, the assent of the Anti-Counterfeit Act by the then president, the late Mwai Kibaki, put counterfeiters on notice that there was a new sheriff in town: the Anti-Counterfeit Authority...

On 23 February 2022, the Anti-Counterfeit Authority announced that they had concluded the migration process to the Anti-Counterfeit Authority Integrated Management System ("AIMS")...