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Information Guide

To patent

A review is conducted to confirm whether the claims made meet the requirements of the law

Requirements:

  • Novelty,
  • inventive step,
  • Industrial application or
  • Solving a technical problem

Required documents

  • Request
  • Description,
  • One or more claims,
  • One or more drawings if applicable and an abstract
  • Petition for the grant of a patent,
  • Name of applicant and other information
  • Title of the invention
  • declaration justifying the right (if the applicant is not an inventor )

The costs

  • 70,000 Frs bu for a Company established in Burundi, and
  • US$250 for a foreign company

Contact information
Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism,
Industrial Property Department
Bujumbura, Mukaza Commune,
Avenue des Manguiers-Bujumbura
Finance Administrative Building No 419/
Phone. : +257 22 22 59 53/257 22 22 68 37
Email: info@mincommerce.gov.bi
Website: www.mincommerce.gov.bi

Patenting in Burundi

Law No 1/13 of July 28, 2009 on Industrial Property in Burundi, particularly governs the rights relating to patents, utility model certificates, industrial designs and models, layout designs of integrated circuits, traditional knowledge, handicrafts and distinctive signs.

An invention is patentable if it is new, involves an inventive step and is capable of industrial application. An invention is new if there is no prior art in the state of the art.

The state of the art is constituted by everything that has been made accessible to the public, whatever the place, the means or the manner, before the date of the filing of the patent application in Burundi or that filed abroad. and whose priority has been validly claimed.

In article 6 of the same law, it is specified that an invention is considered to involve an inventive step when, taking into account the differences and similarities between the claimed invention and the state of the art as defined in section 4, the claimed invention taken as a whole would not have been obvious to a person skilled in the art on the filing date or, if applicable, on the priority date of the claimed invention.

In its chapter III, art 17, it is indicated the objects excluded from patent protection are among other discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods, plans, principles or methods in the field of economic activities, exercise of purely intellectual activities or in terms of gambling, methods of surgical or therapeutic treatment of the human or animal body, as well as diagnostic methods, to name but a few.

This provision does not apply to products used for the implementation of one of these methods

Of publication and opposition

After the expiry of a period of eighteen months from the date of filing, the Director of Industrial Property makes the patent application available to the public for inspection. The public is notified of this act by the publication in the Official Bulletin of Burundi of the following elements:

  • Application number and filing date;
  • Title of the invention;
  • Names of applicant(s) and inventor(s);
  • Priority date;
  • International classification;
  • Drawing, if any, which illustrates the main element or elements of the invention;
  • Abbreviated .