Trademark Independence came in 1966 – before that we applied 1911 , 1956 UK Trademark Act
Patent Independence came in 1989
A dependent Patent System had the following problem
1. An inventor had to apply for protection in the UK , this undermined Kenya’s security and sovereignty;
2. We expended or Kenya’s inventors expended a lot of money in seeking patent grant in the UK , the lawyer had to travel to the UK and had to pay money;
3. There was a dilema with technology transfer in the sense that once one disclosed their information in UK , information was more available in UK than it was in Kenya so it was only people in the UK who could easily access the information while Kenyans had to travel there.
4. The UK Patent System especially UK Act 1977 was regarded as largely inappropriate to the interest of Kenya and other developing countries;
(a) UK Patent Act 1977 did not provide for protection for Biological innovations; there was a hot debate on non-patentability of life forms , research by 1989 had shown that Kenya was making headway in the area of Research and Development evidenced by the fact that KARI had done a lot of research on crops and so had JKCAT , Life form was Kenya’s Forte where they felt that they had made a lot of innovations;
(b) It was also argued that UK Patent Act 1977 did not protect Jua Kali utility models and Kenya needed its own independent system to do this and this is in 1989. In 1988 we had exhibited what Kenya was producing in the Jua Kali Sector the Nyayo Era Exhibition which coincided with Kenya enacting the Intellectual Property Act