L’Oréal Acquires Nice & Lovely Trademark in Multi-Billion Shilling Deal

Media reports (here, here and here) indicate that the world’s largest multinational cosmetics company L’Oréal has acquired Kenya’s Interconsumer Products Ltd’s flagship Nice & Lovely brands, in a multi-million dollar acquisition reported this past week. L’Oréal opened shop in Nairobi in late 2011 and has for the past 18 months been in talks with Interconsumer … Continue reading »

Coming Soon: WIPO – KIPI Seminar on the Madrid System in December

This week’s Law Society of Kenya newsletter contains a notice that the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in collaboration with Kenya Industrial Property Institute (KIPI) is organizing a series of one-day seminars in Kenya intended for business community, trade mark practitioners and representatives of the industrial sector. The objective of the seminars is to familiarize … Continue reading »

A Look at Kenya’s Draft Bill on Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Expressions of Folklore

This week, IPKenya came across the working draft legislation on traditional knowledge (TK) in Kenya. A copy of this draft is available here. With this background in mind, this blogpost will identify some of the key issues for Kenyan policymakers with the help of certain key texts namely, the ARIPO Swakopmund Protocol, Kenya’s National Policy … Continue reading »

Why Intellectual Property Law in Kenya Should Recognise Colour Trademarks

Recently, IPKenya has been following the spirited campaign by Christian Louboutin to assert and protect its trademark red sole, culminating in the highly anticipated outcome of its on-going court battle with fashion house Yves Saint Laurent (YSL). The story goes something like this: in 1992, Christian Louboutin decided to give his shoes a distinctive feature … Continue reading »

The Case for an Inter-Agency Approach to Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement

Today marks the opening of an important event by the Anti-Counterfeit Agency (ACA): “Workshop on the Implementation of an Interagency Approach to Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement: Kenya and the East African Community” Unlike tangible property, IP is not well understood and thus is highly under-utilised in Kenya. That said, it is no secret that … Continue reading »

The Creativez Meetup This Sunday – Let’s Talk Intellectual Property

IPKenya would highly recommend that all attend an important event dubbed “The Creativez Meet-up – Intellectual Property” taking place this Sunday 3rd June from 14h00 to 17h00. Here are just a few reasons why: 1. The calibre of speakers: Almost all the presenters are LL.M holders in Intellectual Property and have extensive experience in their … Continue reading »

Both Kenya’s National Intellectual Property Offices now on Twitter

It’s been almost a year since Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO), the national copyright office officially launched it’s twitter page, a move which was widely applauded. A twitter presence has allowed KECOBO to reach the wider public and spread awareness about copyright and related rights in Kenya. KECOBO has managed the account exceptionally well with almost … Continue reading »

The intellectual property tale of how Kenya almost lost the Kikoi fabric

Recently, the Standard did a feature titled “How Global Coalition saved Local Fabric” in which it called for pro-active measures and long-term strategies to avert the loss of Kenya’s intellectual property assets to foreign entities. “The country has seen one of its most indigenous products, Kiondo, snapped by international companies and nobody knows which one … Continue reading »