Optimising the Judges’ Association and establishing a case law database for the OAPI region

The Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation in Africa (AfrIPI) project organised a regional seminar for judges and magistrates from the 17 Member States of the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) on 26-28 September 2023 in N’Djamena, Chad. The seminar was co-hosted with OAPI supported by the African Network of Intellectual Property Magistrates.

The seminar on implementing a digital case-law database in OAPI Member States and continued support to the OAPI Judges’ Association brought together intellectual property (IP) lawmakers to share experiences and information on developing and strengthening IP laws in the region. The three-day training focused on examining administrative and judicial litigation issues in IP matters and on building the capacity of the Judges’ Association members.

The key points discussed in the event were:

• elaborating on working documents made available to the Judges’ Association by experts establishing the case-law database project for users of the IP system;
• examining the legal and technical architecture of the database set up through the cooperation between AfrIPI and OAPI;
• facilitating the database’s operations;
• sharing good administrative and judicial practices in IP;
• organising the first General Assembly of the Judges’ Association.

The year’s edition of the judges’ seminar brought together IP specialists from the Courts of First Instance, magistrates from the Courts of Appeal, Supreme Court judges and magistrates from the OAPI High Commission of Appeal from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo.

AfrIPI considers this platform’s sustainability to be crucial for enhancing IP enforcement in OAPI Member States and expects association members to serve as national focal points for collecting and adding court judgements to the database.