Patent registration in Nigeria. Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. Nigeria’s mixed economy is the largest in Africa, the 26th-largest in the world by nominal GDP, and 25th-largest by PPP. It is a lower-middle-income economy, with its abundant supply of natural resources, well-developed financial, legal, communications, and transport sectors, and the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Accordingly, many businesses want to enter this market and one of the most important preparations a business needs to take before expanding to this country is to learn the procedure of patent registration in Nigeria.
Patent in Nigeria
According to Nigeria Law, a patent in Nigeria is a grant of a property right given by the Government to an inventor. With a patent, the inventor, or the patentee will have the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling the invention in a country, or importing the invention into a country, along with other rights to protect their best interests.
The unpatentable subjects in Nigeria are:
- Discoveries, laws of nature, and mathematical methods;
- Aesthetic designs;
- Systems, rules, and methods for the performance of mental labor, games or management, computer programs;
- Presentation of data and abstract ideas.
Necessary documents for patent registration in Nigeria
The necessary documents for patent registration in Nigeria include:
- The request to grant a patent (patent application);
- Detailed information on the applicant(s) including the applicant’s and inventor’s names, addresses, citizenships, etc.;
- A description of the invention;
- A signed and stamped power of attorney by the applicant(s);
- A copy of the amendments (if any);
- Priority documents (if any).
- Other required documents.
The procedure of patent registration in Nigeria
To obtain a patent in Nigeria, the applicant needs to submit the patent application to the IP Office of Nigeria.
Whether an invention is a product or process, the same registration procedure is applied.
After submission of the patent application, it will undergo an examination phase by the examiners at the IP Office.
However, it should be noted that the examination is only to check the formal compliance of the application.
Therefore, if all the formality requirement is passed, the patent will be granted to the applicant provided that all the fees are paid in full.
There is no direct search for novelty, inventiveness, and industrial applicability or whether the specification sufficiently discloses the invention.
As the registration procedure is quite simple, the risk of the patent granted is at the applicant own’s responsibility, meaning that there is no guarantee that the validity of the patent will last to the end of the period as the Nigerian law does not recognize substantive examination.
Overall, this is one weakness levied against the system.
In Nigeria, a patent expires after 20 years from the date of the filing of the relevant patent application.
The patent also expires if the patentee doesn’t pay the annuities in time or in the 6 months grace period following the year from which such fees are due.
IP Treaties of Nigeria
IP Treaties of Nigeria are:
- Patent Cooperation Treaty.
- Patent Law Treaty.
- Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
- Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
- Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure, Budapest.
- Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.
You can see a list of Nigeria IP firms here.