AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANISATION (AIPO) PATENT LAW History: The Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle (AIPO in English) is a union for the protection of intellectual property in former French colonies of Africa. This is the only IPR agreement whereby one patent application provides automatic protection in all parties to the agreement. The implementing laws are the Libreville Accord of 1962 as revised by the Bangui Accord of 1977 whose regulations were revised in 1982. Parties to these accords are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo.
Membership: Most AIPO members are parties to WIPO, PCT and Paris.
Administration: A common AIPO Industrial Property Office operates from Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Provisions until now: Patent protection is not available in member states for inventions contrary to public order or morals, plant varieties, animal breeds and biological processes for obtaining plants and animals.
Opposition possibility: No provision is formally made.
SOURCE Alan Jacobs (ed.), Patents Throughout the World, Clark, Boardman & Callaghan, New York, Release #3, July 1991.