“Protecting Your Innovations, Maximizing Your Potential”

In today's fast-paced and competitive business landscape, protecting your innovations and creations of the mind (such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, symbols, names, and images used in commerce) is crucial to staying ahead of the game. Although your innovations are intangible assets and are objects of various forms of legal protection (including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets), it has, due to advancements in technology and the ease of information sharing, become increasingly important to safeguard them from being copied or stolen. At the same time, maximizing your potential is essential for achieving long-term success and growth. This involves not only protecting your innovations but also effectively leveraging them to create new opportunities, generate revenue, and gain a competitive edge.

To achieve these goals, it is essential to have a comprehensive intellectual property strategy in place. This includes obtaining patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets to protect your innovations from unauthorized use. By securing these legal rights, you can prevent others from profiting off your hard work and ensure that you have exclusive control over your creations. However, protecting your innovations goes beyond just obtaining legal rights. It also involves implementing robust internal processes and procedures to safeguard your ideas within your organization. This includes educating your employees about the importance of intellectual property protection, implementing confidentiality agreements, and regularly monitoring and enforcing compliance.

Furthermore, maximizing your potential requires actively leveraging your intellectual property assets to create value. This can involve licensing your innovations to other companies for commercialization or entering into strategic partnerships to jointly develop new products or services. Additionally, you can use your intellectual property as a marketing tool to differentiate yourself from competitors and attract customers.

At Makkobilli Law Firm, we understand the vital role that intellectual property and technology play in today’s fast-paced, innovation-driven world; we recognize the immense value that they hold for businesses across industries and are committed to safeguarding our clients’ interests. Our dedicated team of legal experts specializes in providing comprehensive and strategic solutions to protect, enforce, and maximize the value of our clients’ intellectual property assets.

Our Services

With years of experience in intellectual property and technology transfer law, our team at Makkobilli Law Firm has successfully advised and represented clients on a wide range of IP matters in Ethiopia. We offer comprehensive services tailored to meet the unique needs of each client, including:

A. Serving as Clients’ Local Liaison for Services from Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office

We handle and process applications for obtaining IP rights in Ethiopia, serve as a local liaison for our clients from all over the world, and deliver the following end-to-end support to protect our clients’ IP rights in Ethiopia:

• Handling registration of trademarks, patents, copyrights and industrial designs on behalf of global and local clients who seek protection of their IP rights in Ethiopia;
• Responding to objections raised by the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office;
• Processing recordal of changes in name and address;
• Defending against opposition to client’s applications in administrative trials;
• Opposing applications that impinge on the client’s IP rights.
• Handling registered IP rights’ Renewals;
• Counseling, filing and prosecution of trademarks, patents and industrial designs; and
• Other services needed for protecting IP rights of our clients in Ethiopia.

B. IP Rights Prosecution 

Our attorneys have extensive experience in registering IP rights to protect IP rights of clients. We inventions. Our services include:

• Handling IP licensing and registration process, including initiation, ownership searches, application and renewals on behalf of our clients;
• Guiding and helping clients establish and protect their brand identity through trademark registration in Ethiopia (from conducting thorough trademark searches to filing applications with the appropriate authorities);
• Consulting on availability and eligibility of trademarks and trademark search;
• Assisting creative individuals and businesses in securing copyright protection for their original works, such as literary, artistic, musical, and architectural creations;
• Drafting non-disclosure agreements and developing robust trade secret protection strategies for the protection of confidential business information (such as formulas, processes, and customer lists) by closely working with clients; and
• Delivering other services needed for prosecuting our clients’ IP rights.

C. IP Litigation

We understand that the stakes are high in IP litigations, and for some companies they can be “bet the company” litigations. We, therefore, take the stakes very seriously. Our IP litigation support services include:

• Client representation in trademark, patent, copyright, and design litigations in trial and appellate courts throughout Ethiopia;
• Taking swift actions to enforce our clients’ IP rights in case of infringement or unauthorized use of IP Rights
• Representation on IP infringement, opposition, unfair competition and anti-counterfeiting procedures and enforcement in Ethiopia;
• Conducting research on Ethiopian IP laws and on IP factual issues in Ethiopia (such as the scope of market, competitors, and competing technologies and products in Ethiopia) to assist in IP claim construction hearings and litigations being conducted outside of Ethiopia but in accordance with Ethiopian IP Laws or with regards to violation of IP rights in Ethiopia;
• Drafting applications for handling complex IP litigation cases;
• Pursuing legal actions against misappropriation of our clients’ trade secrets; and
• Delivering other litigation services needed for protecting and ensuring that our clients’ IP rights are upheld.

D. Technology Licensing and Transactions

We assist clients in negotiating and structuring technology licensing agreements, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions involving intellectual property assets. Our team ensures that our clients’ interests are protected and that they can fully leverage their IP rights to drive business growth. Our services include:

• Assisting our clients during their negotiations for technology licensing and transactions;
• Drafting and/or reviewing our clients’ technology transfer agreements; and
• Delivering legal supports to our clients with regards to royalty and franchise arrangements, technology sourcing, technology merger and acquisition, and other IP involving technology agreements and arrangements.