Industrial Designs

– Decree No. 47/2015 of December 31, 2015, in force since March 31, 2016.

Membership in International Conventions

– WTO’s TRIPS Agreement, since August 26, 1995.
– Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in force since December 23, 1996.
– Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm Act, as of July 9, 1998.
– ARIPO, Harare Protocol, since May 18, 2000, but no enabling local law yet.

Filing

Definition: any assembly of lines, colors or any other three-dimensional form which gives a new and original appearance to a product or a part of a product and which may serve as a model for the industrial or hand-made manufacture thereof. 

Applicant: the author or his successor, in any title. 

Novelty: having not been disclosed within the country or abroad, by any publication in tangible form, or used by any other means, before the date of the filing of the application or, before the priority date of the application for registration.

Priority right: a person who has filed an application for an industrial design or model in any of the countries of the Union of Paris or in any country member of the WTO (World Trade Organization) or of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization, enjoys the right of priority to file corresponding applications in Mozambique.

Filing requirements for an application (to be sent to resident agent):
1. Power of attorney, notarized;
2. Drawings, photographs or graphical representations of the design or the model;
3. An assignment if the applicant is not the author.

Electronic filing: not available. 

Electronic signatures: are not accepted (only wet signatures). Scanned copies of signed documents are acceptable, provided they are clear and the notary stamp visible, and the subsequent submission of the original is not required.

Examination

Examination: the Institute of Industrial Property examines the application as to formal requirements. 

Opposition: possible within thirty days from the publication, which can be extended for a further period of thirty days. The lack of response by the applicant to the opposition is deemed as a withdrawal of the application.

Provisional protection: the design application provisionally confers from the date of publication, the protection that would be conferred with the granting of the right. 

Publication: the application is immediately published in the Industrial Property Gazette except if a deferral of the publication was requested.

Protection

Duration: five years from the filing date.

Extension: a prorogation may be granted for four additional periods of five years up to the total of twenty-five years.

Rights conferred by the registration: (1) the exploitation of an industrial design or model registered in Mozambique by any person other than the owner of the registration shall require the latter’s consent; (2) a registered industrial design or model confers to its owner the right to hinder a third party, without his consent, from producing, manufacturing, selling or exploiting the subject matter thereof; (3) moreover, the capacity of bringing a judicial action against any person who commits a counterfeiting of the design or model or who may execute without his consent any preparatory acts in that sense.