General assembly of the Association of Magistrates of the OAPI space

On 12 to 14 October 2022, the African Intellectual Property Organisation (OAPI) and AfrIPI held a constitutive General Assembly of the Association of Judges in Dakar, Senegal.

The symposium aimed at adopting the statutes of the association of judges, electing the bureau of the association, addressing the ways in which the jurisprudential database works, and laying the foundations for the activities of the association. At the end of the symposium, the statutes of the association were adopted, and a bureau elected.

The objectives of the symposium are to:

• create a network of judges specialised in IP dispute resolution;

• build their capacity through training programmes;

• set up a system for sharing information and final judicial decisions rendered in accordance with the regulatory provisions in force, using common good practices.

In 2021, AfrIPI and OAPI organised a regional seminar on the enforcement of intellectual property rights in Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire). This seminar saw the participation of more than 40 magistrates and 30 court clerks from OAPI member states and Djibouti. Its overall objective was to train, inform and raise awareness on the legal instruments in force for a better enforcement of intellectual property rights, and to share experiences on related litigation. The participants discussed the need to create a regional case-law database that is accessible online.