ARIPO – Amendments To The Banjul Protocol Effective 01 March 2026

The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) has recently announced amendments to the Banjul Protocol on Trademarks that will come into force on 01 March 2026. The last amendments that had been made to the Banjul Protocol were in 2023, as ARIPO had undertaken to carry out a comprehensive review of the protocol. The amendments to the Banjul Protocol follow a similar pattern to the changes made to the Harare Protocol on Patents and Industrial Designs in March of this year. The most significant of these recent amendments concerning trademark applications are increases in official fees.

To highlight, fees have increased for the following activities:

• New application: $160.
• Designation for every additional class after the 1^st class: $20 per designated state.
• Surcharge per extra word for the goods specifications of each class on any application after the 50^th word: $10.
• Registration (sealing): $150 for the 1^st class per designated state.
• Search report: $100.
• Requests for extension of time will change to a staggered system, i.e., 1^st request will be $50, the 2^nd request for the same case will now be $100 and 3^rd request and all further requests for the same case will be $200.

The official fees revisions further include the introduction of new fees not previously required. For example:

• Transmittal Fee for Notice of Opposition: $100
• Request for hard copy of Certificate of Registration: $100
• Appeal: $500.

With respect to amendments related to changes to procedure, please note the following. With the introduction of an official fee to oppose a mark, it will now be important that both Notice of Opposition and the corresponding Official fee are submitted to ARIPO in good time before the due date. If the payment is received after the deadline date to oppose, the Opponent will be deemed to have filed out of time. ARIPO has also introduced a provision allowing parties who settle an opposition through Alternative Dispute Resolution to request the withdrawal of the opposition, addressing a previous gap in the Banjul Protocol, which offered no mechanism to conclude opposition proceedings once the parties had reached a settlement. Opposition proceedings which are fully underway at the national level, however, will still need to be withdrawn according to national laws.

Designated Member States will now have 6 months instead of 9 months for substantive examination of trademark applications. Whilst the opposition period remains the same at 3 months. Upon the expiry of this opposition period, the applicant must now make payment of the registration fees within 3 months instead of the previous 12 months or the registration will be deemed abandoned. There is now a provision for the amendment of the reproduction of the mark. However, the application for amendment of the reproduction of the mark must be submitted before the application is provided with a filing date.

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