Your Company Name Is Not a Trade Mark: Two Registers, One Right

This page is the company name versus trade mark operating file: it decides which BRELA register gives you something enforceable against a trader who copies your word. It is not a marks-prosecution manual, nor an advocate’s infringement opinion.

• Which vehicle carries the name: branch, subsidiary or local company
• Buying a brand with the shares: the diligence file
• Holding the entity that owns the mark: foreign ownership limits
• Foreign-language papers at a Tanzanian registry: BAKITA translation

As at 14 September 2026. Confirm the live application sheets, class list and fee schedule on brela.go.tz; this file rests on Cap. 212, the Business Names (Registration) Act Cap. 213 and Cap. 326.

Two registers at one agency, and only one makes property

BRELA keeps both. The Registrar of Companies maintains the company register; a separate marks Registrar maintains the register of trade and service marks. Same agency and payment portal, different statutes, examiners and tests.

Name clearance answers one question: is this style already entered, or so nearly resembling an existing entry as to be calculated to deceive? The Registrar may refuse it, and may direct a company already registered under such a style to change it. That remedy moves an entry; it orders nobody to stop printing labels.

The marks examiner asks something else: can this sign distinguish these goods in trade, and does it conflict with an earlier mark in the same field? What comes out is property: assignable, licensable, chargeable, enforceable against a sole trader who never opened a company file. Cap. 213 offers nothing of the sort: it records which proprietor trades under which style, and confers no monopoly.

Cap. 326 is Mainland legislation. Zanzibar keeps its own registers (companies at BPRA, marks under island industrial property law), so a Mainland certificate proves nothing there.

Before anything is filed: what a registered mark does not license

A mark in a class is not permission to trade in that class. GN No. 487A of 2025 reserves listed activities for citizens, and a certificate in class 39 opens no reserved transport activity to a foreign-held company. Nor is it a business licence; that sits under the Business Licensing Act Cap. 208.

Certain words are gated earlier, at the name stage: “bank” and “financial institution” need prior written consent under the Banking and Financial Institutions Act, 2006, and “insurance” needs the Tanzania Insurance Regulatory Authority. That consent does not carry across to the marks file.

An applicant neither resident in nor carrying on business in Tanzania must give an address for service within the country: section 21(2)(e). A foreign parent filing from an overseas address alone builds a file that dies when the examiner first writes.

Five records, five different things they stop

The certificate word and the pack word are rarely the same

A certificate reads “Mikumi Beverages Limited”. The bottle reads MIKUMI. The Registrar cleared the first; the second is what the customer asks for and what a competitor copies. A style can clear at the company desk on Monday and infringe a mark registered in 2019 on Tuesday, because the two examiners do not consult each other.

File the sign you actually use (word alone, device alone, or both as separate applications) in the form that goes to print. A word registered in plain type covers it however you later set it; a device registered in one lock-up is narrower, and changing the logo can leave the entry describing nothing on the shelf. Invoices and the council licence carry the incorporated style. The label carries the mark.

Classes fix the scope of the right

Section 15 classifies applications by the International Classification: 45 classes, 34 for goods and 11 for services. Within the class, the specification fixes the monopoly, and one lifted from a class heading rarely describes what a Tanzanian company sells.

The recurring error is class 35, which covers retail and business services rather than the product. A bottler needs class 32; registering class 35 because the company “sells” water leaves the bottle unprotected.

File in every class you trade in today, plus any adjacent class you have a dated plan to enter. Not more: section 35(1) opens a registration to removal where the mark goes unused for three years or longer. Parked classes are not free storage.

The order the desks take

1. Run both searches before artwork is commissioned: the company register on BRELA’s Online Registration System, and the marks register in each intended class.
2. Clear the style and incorporate under Cap. 212. That fixes the legal person, not the brand.
3. Decide and classify the mark separately: word, device or both, in printed form, under the International Classification, with a specification mirroring your invoice lines.
4. File with the marks Registrar: representation, specification, applicant details, and a Tanzanian address for service under section 21(2)(e).
5. Answer the examination report, then let the prescribed opposition window run once the application is advertised in the Trade and Service Marks Journal under section 13.
6. Take the certificate and open two diary entries: the renewal date, and an annual check that the mark is still used in every registered class.
7. Put the mark into the paperwork: an assignment from the design agency, a licence to the distributor, and a named schedule in any share sale.

The papers a marks file needs

The prescribed application sheet under the Trade and Service Marks Regulations. Confirm the current version at the registry, since sheets are reissued without notice. A representation of the mark as used. A statement of goods or services by class. An authorisation of agent or power of attorney binding the applicant, notarised where signed abroad. An address for service in Tanzania.

Then the applicant’s certificate of incorporation, with a certified translation where the original is in neither English nor Kiswahili. Where priority is claimed, the certified priority document: the Paris Convention allows six months from the first foreign filing for marks, against twelve for patents. Payment follows the control number the portal generates.

Two papers people bring that prove nothing: the certificate of incorporation, which is not title to a mark, and the business licence, which is not evidence of use.

Illustrative arithmetic: finding out late

A Dar es Salaam bottler incorporates in 2021, clears its style, and sells under a single pack word. It never files. In 2024 a competitor registers that word in class 32, and in 2026 the bottler is put to a rebrand.

Stock in hand: 3,200,000 printed shrink sleeves at TZS 95 each, written off at TZS 304,000,000. New artwork and two replacement label plates, TZS 48,000,000. Depot signage at 11 sites at TZS 3,600,000 each, TZS 39,600,000. Livery on 26 delivery trucks at TZS 1,450,000 each, TZS 37,700,000. Total exposure TZS 429,300,000, before an hour of legal time and before the shelf position lost while retailers re-list. Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation.

Run in the other order, the same file costs a search, a classification decision and a set of filings taken at incorporation.

Term, renewal and the two clocks

Protection runs seven years from registration under section 29(1), then in ten-year periods on each renewal under section 29(2). A mark registered in 2021 falls due in 2028, then 2038, then 2048. That diary does not recur annually like the BRELA annual return or the TRA calendar, which is why marks lapse inside otherwise well-run companies.

Section 35(1) is the second clock, and it runs against the proprietor rather than towards a deadline. Keep dated proof of use with the certificate: invoices naming the branded line, artwork proofs, advertising bookings, photographs of shelf stock. Anyone who cannot evidence use argues it from memory.

Where this file stalls

• Style cleared, packaging printed, no marks search run; the first notice is a demand letter from an earlier registrant.
• The mark filed in the founder’s personal name while the company signs the distribution agreements, so proprietor and trader differ and neither sues cleanly.
• No written assignment from the design agency, which therefore still owns copyright in the artwork just registered as a device.
• A foreign applicant with no address for service; the examiner writes, nothing comes back, the application lapses on time.
• A Mainland certificate produced to a Zanzibar distributor as though it bound anyone there.
• A cease-and-desist letter sent on the strength of a certificate of incorporation, which hands the recipient’s advocate an easy reply.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

The Registrar of Companies owns the company register and the power to direct a change of style. The marks Registrar owns registration, opposition, rectification and renewal. The Fair Competition Commission owns the counterfeit-goods channel under the Merchandise Marks Act Cap. 85 and conduct under the Fair Competition Act, 2003, and it opens by producing the certificate you did not obtain. COSOTA owns copyright in the artwork.

The Commercial Division of the High Court owns injunctions, delivery-up and damages, including passing off where nothing is registered: an advocate’s file built on reputation evidence, far harder than producing a certificate. TRA holds the taxpayer identification number in the incorporated style, not the brand. BPRA holds the islands. Patents and utility models sit under a different statute and registry. The Banjul Protocol at ARIPO and the Madrid Protocol are a separate decision, settled after the Mainland position.

Zatra prepares, structures and coordinates the file, including the hand-off to an advocate where infringement is live. It does not practise law or decide registrability.

What to confirm before you act

• The current application sheet and fee schedule at the registry, not a saved copy.
• The prescribed opposition period, which section 27 leaves to the Regulations.
• That the chosen classes match your own invoice lines.
• Who owns the artwork, in a signed assignment, before the device is filed.
• Whether the activity sits on the reserved list at GN No. 487A of 2025, before a foreign-held applicant files.
• The island position, if you sell there.
• The address for service on record, and that somebody reads post sent there.