Section 27 Patents and Designs Act 1971

Section 27 of the Patents and Designs Act 1971 is about Foreign priority. It is under ‘General’ of the Act. It provides as follows:

(1) The Minister may, with a view to the fulfilment of a treaty, convention or other
international arrangement or agreement to which Nigeria is a party, declare by order in the Federal Gazette that any country specified in the order is a convention country for the purposes of this section.

(2) So long as there is in force an order under subsection (1) of this section declaring a country to be a convention country, a patent application or a design application in Nigeria, if an earlier corresponding application for the protection of an invention or the registration of a design has been made in that convention country, shall be treated as having been made on the date when that earlier application was made:

Provided that this subsection shall not apply where the earlier application was
made–
(a) in the case of an invention, more than twelve months; or
(b) in the case of a design, more than six months,
before the application in Nigeria.

(3) Where a person has applied for the protection of an invention or the registration of a design by an application which–
(a) in accordance with a treaty, convention or other international arrangement or
agreement subsisting between any two or more convention countries is
equivalent to an application duly made in anyone of those convention countries; or
(b) in accordance with the law of any convention country is equivalent to an application duly made in that convention country, he shall be deemed for the purposes of this Act to have applied in each of those convention countries or in that convention country, as the case may be.

(4) Where a patent application or a design application is to be treated by virtue of
subsection (2) of this section as having been made on the date of an earlier application in a convention country, that earlier date is referred to in this Act as a foreign priority, and in this Act the expression “foreign priority” shall be construed accordingly.

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