A Profile Of Patent Applications Filed In Mozambique

• Published date: 12 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Patent
• Law Firm: Inventa International
• Author: Mr Vitor Moreira

Inventa International has carried out a study on patenting activity in Mozambique, presenting some statistics highlighting a profile of the main patent applicants, and the technologies they relate to in the country.

To be granted in Mozambique, a patent application may be directly filed before the Mozambican national patent office (IPI) or can be filed before the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), where an applicant requires Mozambique as a designated state.

Identifying information regarding patent activity in Mozambique is not an easily performed task, managed by means of some clicks and an internet search engine. The IPI does not publish the bibliographic data of filed patent applications. The patent applications filed in Mozambique are not searchable by means of Espacenet, which is the most complete free patent database, because IPI does not provide data to this source.

The internet country code of Mozambique (.mz) does not feature in the list of countries codes indexed in the Espacenet, in which a country code consists of two letters indicating the country or organisation where the patent application was filed or granted.

Our source of information for performing this study was the statistics database of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Official Bulletin of Industrial Property (OBIP), which is prepared by IPI and may be acquired directly before the office. The OBIP comprises bibliographic data of patent applications and information that refer to the patent numbers, titles, applicants and inventors of patent applications in Mozambique.

Historical data

We have identified the patent filing activity before the IPI in Mozambique from 2010 to 2019, from data derived from the WIPO statistics database, as it is presented in Figure 1. It is possible to observe a slight growth trend for the overall quantity of patent applications filed directly before the IPI, and it appears that residents have contributed to a significant share of this set of patent applications.

Patent applications in Mozambique 2010-2019 (Figure.1)

Patent applications in Mozambique are slightly more numerous than in neighbouring countries, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe when compared to the number of patent applications (direct and Patent Cooperation Treaty national phase entries), as shown in Table 1, and the number of patent applications filed by residents, as shown in Table 2.

Data retrieved from the OBIPs released...