Two years ago we reported that the Fijian Parliament had passed IP bills that created the new Acts of 2021. Whilst the commencement date is still to be announced, these laws will bring Fiji into line with the international trade mark community, with major changes such as adaptation of the Nice classification and provisions for Madrid protocol designations.
In partial preparation for these new laws, Fiji deposited its instrument of accession to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property on 19 October 2023, so becoming the 180th member state. Fiji will become bound by the Paris Convention on 19 January 2024, though its legal framework will only apply once the local laws are enacted.
Its current 1933 Trade Marks Act is almost a century old and uses a classification system that is based largely on the one created with the UK’s Trade Mark Registration Act of 1875 (referred to colloquially as “pre-1938 classification”). There are 50 classes of goods, with a catch-all class 50 then divided into a further ten sub-classes. Services cannot be protected apart from via the tenuous (International) class 09 and 16 equivalents for goods used for such services. Read more