Any person in Papua New Guinea or abroad interested to register and obtain protection over a trademark, patent or industrial design in Papua New Guinea, can apply to the IPOPNG to have these intellectual properties protected.
IPO administers registration of trademarks, patents and industrial designs and maintains Registries of trademarks, patents and industrial designs. IPO also deals with copyright matters by providing information on the copyright protection.
The Office assesses their application/s in accordance with the relevant
statutory requirements under various IP legislations and grants intellectual property
rights (IPRs) accordingly.
The IPOPNG was formerly the Trade Marks Office of Papua New Guinea. The Trade Marks Office was formerly housed under the then Company’s Office Registry (now the Business and Certification Division within IPA) and was then responsible for administration of existing trademarks registered in PNG prior to Independence. This was due to the existence of the then only IP legislation, the Trade Marks Act (Ch.385) which was enacted in 1978 and entered into force in 1980. The Trade Mark Registry was mainly doing manual processing and registration of trademarks from 1978 to1996.
In 1999, a National Executive Council (NEC) decision (Decision No. 104/99) enabled the name of the Office to change to the Intellectual Property Office of PNG and also enabled the enactment of IP legislations on Patents & Industrial Designs and Copyright and Neighbouring Rights. This was following PNG’s membership to WIPO & WTO in 1996 and 1999 respectively.
The Office then changed its name and focus and assumed the role for administering all IP legislations included the Trade Marks Act (Ch.385), the Patents and Industrial Designs Act 2000 and the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act 2000.
Since then IPOPNG has become a fully fledged office within the Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) with defined Units that deal with trademarks examination and registration, patents and industrial design examination and registration and legal matters concerning IP.
