BRELA, ARIPO or Madrid: The Route That Survives a Tanzanian Court

This page is the filing route operating file: which of the three routes produces a right a proprietor can plead here, and what the other two cost. It is not a class-drafting manual.

• What incorporation does not give: your company name is not a trade mark
• The national filing itself: registration at BRELA IP
• The register behind the owner: beneficial ownership filing
• Where it sits in the first quarter: the 90-day launch plan

As at 14 September 2026. Confirm the register and fees at brela.go.tz, the Schedule of Fees at wipo.int and the Protocol on Marks at aripo.org; this file rests on Cap. 326, Banjul and Madrid.

The register that carries a suit here

The Registrar of Trade and Service Marks is an office inside BRELA and keeps the Mainland register. A mark entered there runs seven years from the filing date and renews for ten years at a time. The right is territorial: it exists where a statute creates it, for the goods the specification names, and nowhere else.

Unguja and Pemba sit outside that statute. Marks are not a Union matter, so the islands register under the Zanzibar Industrial Property Act, 2008 at the Business and Property Registration Agency. Selling on both sides of the channel means two filings, two certificates and two agents. That register has a page of its own.

Lakairo: what the Court of Appeal decided about ARIPO

ARIPO, from Harare, administers the Protocol on Marks adopted at Banjul in 1993. An applicant files once, designates the states it wants, and each designated office has twelve months to refuse. Absent refusal the mark takes effect there as a national registration, for ten years, renewable.

That is what the Protocol provides. In Lakairo Industries Group Co. Limited and Others v. Kenafrica Group Co. Limited and Others, Civil Appeal No. 593 of 2022, the Court of Appeal settled what a Tanzanian judge may do with it. Rights in a mark are territorial and arise on registration under Cap. 326; the Protocol on Marks was never domesticated; an ARIPO registration is therefore unenforceable here.

Tanzania is dualist: a treaty binds the Republic internationally from ratification and does nothing in the Commercial Division until Parliament enacts it. The judgment cancels nothing at Harare: the designation stays on that register and its renewal fee falls due. It decides only that the certificate will not carry an infringement suit.

Madrid designates Tanzania; Cap. 326 does not receive it

Tanzania appears on WIPO’s list of Contracting Parties to the Madrid Protocol. An application filed through the office of origin is recorded by the International Bureau in Geneva and notified to BRELA, which has twelve months to refuse provisionally: eighteen where the longer period is declared under Article 5(2)(b). Silence leaves the designation standing.

It stands at Geneva. Cap. 326 carries no machinery for an international registration: no number on the national register, no certificate under the Registrar’s hand. The reasoning that decided the appeal turned on domestication, not on which office issued the paper, and the Madrid Protocol has not been enacted here either.

A second exposure has nothing to do with Tanzania. For five years the international registration depends on the basic mark at home; if that is refused, withdrawn or attacked, every designation falls with it. Article 9quinquies allows transformation into national applications within three months, keeping the original date: which here means filing at BRELA after all, Swiss francs already spent.

What each route actually buys

Not four alternatives of equal standing: two produce a certificate a Tanzanian registry issued, two an entry in a register kept on another continent.

Before you file: the agent, the channel, the applicant’s name

A proprietor without a place of business here cannot file in its own hand. It appoints an agent with an address for service, on a power of attorney signed by an officer with authority, notarised and legalised abroad. That address receives every examination report and opposition notice; one nobody reads is how a mark dies unopposed.

Wholesale and retail distribution is reserved to citizens at GN No. 487A of 2025, so a foreign brand sells through a locally owned distributor. Keep the application in the proprietor’s name and license the distributor under a recorded licence. Naming him as applicant to save an agent’s charge hands him the mark, and buying it back costs more than the portfolio.

Cost is per class at BRELA and per designation at Geneva

The Registry takes one class per application. The Nice Classification runs to forty-five classes (thirty-four of goods, eleven of services), and a drinks brand that also runs delivery occupies three. That is three applications, three fees, three certificates, three renewal dates, paid against a control number raised in the Online Registration System through the Government electronic Payment Gateway.

Geneva prices differently. One international application covers every class: a basic fee of CHF 653, or CHF 903 where the mark is in colour; a complementary fee of CHF 100 for each designated Contracting Party without an individual fee; and CHF 100 more for every class beyond three. Those sit in the Schedule of Fees to the Common Regulations; confirm them at wipo.int. Harare charges a third way: a basic fee, one per designated state, one per class.

On the invoice the Geneva column wins. On the file it buys paper the Registrar does not hold.

The sequence a Mainland application takes

1. Search before the name is committed: the register is searchable online, but a search report is orientation, not clearance.
2. Draft the specification class by class against goods actually sold, not the whole class heading: which invites opposition and exposes you on non-use.
3. Execute the power of attorney and lodge the address for service: reliably three weeks nobody budgeted.
4. File and pay: one application per class, each with its own control number and filing date: the date that ranks you.
5. Answer the examination report on time; objections on descriptiveness, earlier marks and loose wording are met by amendment, not a fresh filing.
6. Watch the advertisement: the accepted mark is published in the Trade and Service Marks Journal and an opponent has sixty days to file. Read it for competitors too.
7. Take the certificate, then open what follows: the island application at BPRA, and recordation with the Fair Competition Commission if goods are imported.
8. Diarise renewal from the filing date and keep dated proof of use: invoices, packaging, advertising.

Papers the file needs

• Power of attorney in the proprietor’s exact registered name, notarised and legalised where required
• A clean representation of the mark, with the colour claim where colour is claimed
• The specification, drafted per class, with the class number stated
• Certificate of incorporation or a current extract for the applicant
• Priority document and certified translation, where a Paris Convention claim is made
• Any licence or assignment to be recorded, where a distributor uses the mark or it moved within the group
• An address for service, and a person still reading post sent there in ten years

Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation

A packaged-foods group owns two marks, a word mark and a device, in three Nice classes, sold on the Mainland and in Zanzibar. Assume, illustratively, TZS 1,150,000 per Mainland application including the agent, TZS 950,000 per island one, and TZS 3,050 to the franc.

• Mainland: two marks across three classes is six applications: 6 × TZS 1,150,000 = TZS 6,900,000.
• Islands: six more at BPRA: 6 × TZS 950,000 = TZS 5,700,000. Total TZS 12,600,000.
• Designating instead: CHF 653 basic plus CHF 100 complementary is CHF 753 a mark, so two marks come to roughly TZS 4,593,000.
• Apparent saving on the quotation: about TZS 8,000,000.

It evaporates on the first dispute. The designation yields no certificate for the recordation application, so consignments meet that gate with nothing to produce, and the Mainland filings are made anyway a year later: behind whoever reached the Registry first. That lost year of ranking is worth more than the eight million shillings deferred.

Where the route choice stalls

• Group counsel designates Tanzania from Geneva, reports the market covered, and finds at the first infringement nothing to plead.
• An ARIPO certificate produced in court after the appeal, and a suit ending on a preliminary objection with costs.
• One class filed, three sold: a certificate covering the snack against a competitor packing the same brand onto the drink.
• A renewal diary kept on the international registration alone, while the national term expires.

What changed: a revised edition, a judgment, a recordation gate

Three things have moved. Cap. 326 now reads as the 2023 revised edition, so quote sections from that text. The Court of Appeal’s 2025 decision turned ARIPO enforceability from an argument into a holding; the judgment is on judiciary.go.tz. And since 1 December 2025 the Merchandise Marks (Recordation) Regulations, 2025: GN No. 352F of 2025, under the Merchandise Marks Act, Cap. 85: require a mark on goods imported to the Mainland to be recorded with the Fair Competition Commission, on an application that asks for the registration certificate. The route chosen decides whether a container clears.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

BRELA owns the Mainland register, examination and renewal. BPRA owns the island register under the 2008 statute. The International Bureau owns the international registration; ARIPO owns the Banjul file. The Fair Competition Commission owns recordation and seizure, TRA Customs detention at entry, and COSOTA copyright in label artwork under the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, Cap. 218. An infringement suit belongs to an advocate. Zatra drafts the specification, instructs the agent, sequences the filings across both registers and keeps the renewal diary; it does not practise law, register marks or promise a grant.

What to confirm before you act

• Whether an existing designation of Tanzania has any national entry behind it
• Classes actually sold against the classes on each certificate, and the next renewal date
• The fees currently published by the Registry, and the control number raised before payment
• Whether the designation still runs on the complementary fee, not an individual one
• What an existing Banjul designation is worth on the islands, with ARIPO and BPRA
• That the applicant named on each form is the proprietor and not the distributor