Registering a Trademark Internationally: What You Learn by Doing It
Cross-cultural focus groups, abandoned trademark risks, multi-system protection — field experience with brand strategy in an international context.
This field report comes from filing trademarks for a digital product launched in West and East Africa. The lessons — importance of prior art searches, cultural impact on naming, multi-system strategy — apply to any trademark protection project in an international context.
In March 2024, I went through the full process of registering a trademark in Africa — specifically through WIPO — for JIPS, a B2B platform I co-founded for West African markets.
What I expected: a relatively standard administrative process to hand off to an intellectual property firm.
What I actually went through: a process that led me to question the product name itself, arbitrate between two culturally opposing visions identified in focus groups, and build a protection strategy across three different legal systems — after discovering several abandoned similar trademarks on our target territories.
Here’s what I learned.
Naming decisions don’t get made behind a screen
Before initiating any filing, we had an open question: what name for the brand?
Two options were on the table. The first: a name with an African resonance, rooted in the cultural codes of target markets, carrying meaning in local languages. The second: a short, phonetically simple, memorable name across all languages, without explicit cultural meaning — what I’ll call JIPS here.
Rather than deciding on gut feel, we ran focus groups in two markets: Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Two countries, two distinct legal systems (OAPI for Abidjan, ARIPO for Accra), two different digital consumer profiles.
The result was clear — and perfectly divisive.
The generational divide: a strategic data point, not a detail
Participants over 40 overwhelmingly preferred the African-resonance name. The expressed reasons were consistent: cultural anchoring, a sense of closeness, the feeling that the brand “belongs to us,” resistance to what they perceived as imported codes.
Participants under 40 preferred the short, global option. Their arguments: modernity, international aspiration, ease of recall regardless of mother tongue, absence of any connotation that might anchor the brand to a single ethnic or regional group.
This divide was sharp in both countries. The nuance: the preference for the African name was slightly more pronounced in Côte d’Ivoire than in Ghana, where greater exposure to Anglophone tech brands creates stronger familiarity with short, neutral names.
The decision came down in favour of the short name for one simple strategic reason: the product’s core target was active urban consumers, predominantly under 40, with intensive smartphone use. The older adults’ preference was a signal not to ignore — but not the priority signal for a first-adoption digital product.
The takeaway: naming focus groups must be segmented by age bracket from the design phase. Aggregating results without this demographic lens would have produced an averaged signal with no decision-making value.
Prior art searches when registering a trademark in Africa
Once the name was settled, the first legal step is a prior art search. This is where things get interesting.
OAPI (the African Intellectual Property Organization, Yaoundé) covers 17 Francophone African countries with a single filing. Its trademark database is searchable. But what the search reveals isn’t always straightforward to interpret.
We found several trademarks phonetically or visually similar to our target. Some were active in different classes from ours — no direct conflict, but a flag for vigilance. Others were abandoned: registered, not renewed, theoretically in the public domain.
The abandoned ones deserve attention.
An abandoned trademark doesn’t automatically create clear space. Several risks remain:
Residual notoriety. If the abandoned trademark had real commercial presence, even briefly, consumers may still associate it with another product or service. Filing an identical or similar name can create market confusion that damages your own identity.
Opportunistic re-filing. In some African jurisdictions, third parties may file trademarks similar to abandoned ones in hopes of future monetization — a phenomenon close to trademark squatting, less documented in Africa than in Asia but very real.
Cooling-off periods. Some systems apply delays between the official abandonment of a trademark and its effective availability for re-filing. Failing to check this can invalidate your filing or open a subsequent challenge.
We chose not to file a name too similar to an abandoned trademark on a key territory, even though the legal path was technically open. Long-term legal security was worth the adjustment.
OAPI, ARIPO, WIPO: trademark registration options in Africa
Trademark protection in West Africa isn’t as simple as a single filing. It requires understanding three systems that don’t overlap.
OAPI (African Intellectual Property Organization, Yaoundé): a single filing that provides protection across 17 Francophone African countries — Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Cameroon, Mali, Burkina Faso, among others. This is the foundation of any brand strategy in the UEMOA/CEMAC zone.
ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Organization, Harare): the Anglophone equivalent, covering Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and others. An OAPI filing does not protect in Ghana. Reciprocally, an ARIPO filing does not cover Côte d’Ivoire. If you operate on both sides of the linguistic border, you need both.
The Madrid System (WIPO): the international filing system managed by the World Intellectual Property Organization. It allows, from a national or regional base filing, to extend protection to over 130 countries in a single centralised procedure. OAPI is a member of the Madrid System as an organisation — which means an OAPI filing can serve as a base for an international extension via Madrid.
Our final strategy: OAPI filing as a base, Madrid extension to cover priority markets outside the OAPI zone, and a separate ARIPO filing for Ghana.
This trifecta isn’t cheap. But for a brand intended to operate across multiple African markets and attract international partners or investors, the absence of coherent territorial protection is a value-dilution risk that investor due diligence identifies immediately.
Class strategy: where most founders make mistakes
The Nice Classification organises trademarks into 45 classes — products (classes 1–34) and services (classes 35–45). Each filing must specify the classes for which protection is requested.
The classic mistake: filing only in the class that corresponds to the primary activity. That’s insufficient for three reasons.
First, a digital platform typically spans several classes simultaneously. A marketplace combines class 35 (retail, buyer-seller matching), class 42 (IT services, software, applications), and potentially class 36 if it integrates payment or credit services. Filing in only one leaves the door open for a third party to file in the others.
Second, adjacent classes are vectors for brand confusion. If your trademark becomes known in class 35 and a competitor files a similar name in class 36, consumer confusion will harm you even if the legal protection is formally distinct.
Third, a multi-class strategy protects the future value of the brand. If you plan to expand into complementary services — logistics, insurance, credit, training — filing those classes from the start costs marginally more but avoids having to buy back or challenge a trademark filed in the interim by a third party.
We filed in four classes. Each decision was discussed with the IP firm by explicitly laying out the 36-month product roadmap.
What I take from this process for any African launch project
| What you assume | What the process teaches |
|---|---|
| Naming is a marketing decision | It’s also a long-term legal and strategic decision |
| An abandoned trademark = clear space | Residual prior art, cooling-off periods, confusion risks |
| One OAPI filing covers Africa | It covers 17 Francophone countries — not Ghana, Nigeria, or Kenya |
| Filing in your main class is enough | Adjacent and future classes are risk vectors |
| Focus groups validate the preferred name | They mostly reveal who your real target audience is |
Two operational lessons I apply systematically to every digital launch project that involves registering a trademark in Africa or across several regional systems — and particularly to West African digital launch projects:
First: engage a firm specialising in African intellectual property from the naming phase, not after. The prior art search can change the name choice. Discovering a potential conflict after printing the first campaign materials is costly in every sense.
Second: trademark protection is a component of company valuation. For a scale-up project that aims to raise funds or attract strategic partners, clear and documented territorial protection is an asset — and its absence is a red line in any serious due diligence.
Registering a trademark in Africa is not a formality. It’s a strategic decision disguised as an administrative procedure. Treat it as such.
If you’re structuring the launch of a brand or product in West Africa and questions about naming, focus groups, or IP protection are on your plate, get in touch directly. This is the type of decision where a few weeks of rigour upfront avoids years of litigation.