Registering a Trademark in Zanzibar: The Filing BRELA Cannot Make

This page is the Zanzibar trade-mark operating file: why a Mainland registration stops at the channel, which registry takes the island application, and what the second certificate changes when somebody has to be stopped. It is not a filing-route comparison and not a substitute for an advocate on the island roll.

• The Mainland side of the same brand: registering at BRELA
• Operating on both sides at once: two files, not one desk
• A name that is not a company: business name registration
• The register behind the proprietor: beneficial ownership

As at 14 September 2026. Confirm forms, fees and the opposition window at bpra.go.tz and the Mainland position at brela.go.tz; this file rests on the island’s 2008 Act, Cap. 326 and the Merchandise Marks Act, Cap. 85.

Cap. 326 stops at the channel

Cap. 326 gives the Registrar of Trade and Service Marks at BRELA a register whose reach is Mainland Tanzania. Industrial property is absent from the Union matters in the First Schedule to the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania, 1977, so the Revolutionary Government legislates for Unguja and Pemba on its own account. It did so in 2008, in a statute covering marks, patents, industrial designs and trade names together.

A Mainland certificate produced at a BPRA counter is a foreign document. It opens no application, carries no priority into the island register, and answers nothing put by a prior island registrant. Protection across the United Republic is two registrations, not one with a wider footprint.

The two registers, side by side

The inverted terms are what diaries get wrong: one reminder set for both certificates loses the Mainland entry three years early. Neither register watches the other, so an assignment or a change of proprietor’s name must be recorded twice.

Before the filing: who may own the mark, and who may trade under it

Wholesale and retail distribution sits on the reserved list at GN No. 487A of 2025. Proprietorship of a mark is not itself a reserved activity, so a foreign brand owner may hold the island registration in its own name; the trade underneath it is the restricted part. The ordinary structure appoints a locally owned distributor, licenses the mark to it in writing, and keeps the certificate with the proprietor. A ZIPA certificate under the Zanzibar Investment Promotion and Protection Act, 2018 confers nothing on the register.

A proprietor without a place of business there files through an agent holding an address for service in Zanzibar, on a power of attorney executed for that agent and legalised where the proprietor sits. An instrument drafted for the Dar es Salaam agent will not carry the island application.

One agency, three registers on the island

BPRA holds the companies index under the Zanzibar Companies Act, 2013, the business-names register and the industrial property register: three files, three certificates, one counter. A Mainland company trading on Unguja registers as a foreign company before it trades, and the name search clearing that incorporation never touches the marks register.

Filing at BPRA: the sequence

1. Search the island register first: under the word, device and any transliteration actually used there, before signage is ordered.
2. Fix the proprietor: the holder must be the entity that still owns the brand after a distributorship ends, not the resident local partner.
3. Appoint the Zanzibar agent and execute the power of attorney, notarised and legalised, with the island address for service on its face.
4. Settle the classes against goods and services actually sold on Unguja and Pemba, under the Nice Classification, never by copying the Mainland specification.
5. Lodge the application with the representation of the mark, the specification, the proprietor’s corporate papers and that power of attorney.
6. Answer the examination report on the registry’s time limit; a descriptive specification is narrowed here.
7. Watch the island Journal and diarise the close of opposition from the date the advertisement appears.
8. Take the certificate and set renewal on the island’s ten-year cycle, reminder eleven months out, Mainland date on its own line.

The papers the island file needs

BPRA’s current application form; a clear representation of the mark as used; the specification with class numbers; a certified copy of the proprietor’s certificate of incorporation or register extract; the legalised power of attorney naming the island agent; and, where a local company will trade under the mark, the licence or distribution agreement with that company’s BPRA certificate and Zanzibar business licence.

Where one pack is sold on both sides, keep both certificates in one folder: a bank or a buyer running diligence asks for the pair.

What the island certificate buys at enforcement

Standing. A suit over goods sold in Stone Town is brought in the High Court of Zanzibar, on the island entry; a decree of the Commercial Division in Dar es Salaam does not reach that shop, and neither jurisdiction nor execution can be borrowed. The Court of Appeal of the United Republic sits above both, where the two paths finally converge.

Without it the proprietor is left with passing off: reputation there, misrepresentation and damage, each proved from scratch inside the limitation period Zanzibar’s own statute sets for a tort. Registration disposes of the first proof. Where goods fall in a regulated class, the Zanzibar Food and Drugs Agency (ZFDA) takes food, drugs and cosmetics and the Zanzibar Bureau of Standards takes standards marks, both expecting the island entry.

The border is Union; the recordation tool is not

Customs and excise are Union matters, so TRA clears imports at Malindi port and Abeid Amani Karume International Airport as at Dar es Salaam. The lever a Mainland brand owner pulls there: recordation with the Fair Competition Commission under the Merchandise Marks (Recordation) Regulations, 2025, made as GN No. 352F of 2025, in force since 1 December 2025 and valid one year at a time: sits inside a Mainland statute, and does not attach to an entry made at an island port.

Plan around the asymmetry. A consignment stopped at Dar es Salaam on a live record can be re-routed through Zanzibar and met by an officer with nothing to read. What remains at the island gate is the registration itself, a written notice to the customs desk naming authorised importers and tariff headings, and the product regulator. Goods landed there and shipped across afterwards re-enter Mainland territory, and meet the record there.

Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation: the price of filing second

A hospitality brand registered at BRELA in class 43 opens a forty-room property on Unguja and finds the same word mark on the island register in a former local partner’s name, entered two years earlier. Rebranding is costed at signage TZS 38,000,000, printed collateral and marked linen TZS 12,000,000, re-photography and relisting TZS 9,000,000: TZS 59,000,000 before a night is lost.

The lost nights are the larger number. Six weeks of suppressed forward bookings at forty rooms, 60% occupancy and an average nightly rate of TZS 320,000 gives 40 × 0.60 × 42 = 1,008 room-nights, and 1,008 × TZS 320,000 = TZS 322,560,000. Total exposure TZS 381,560,000, also the ceiling the incumbent will price an assignment against.

A third route, striking the entry for non-use or bad faith, is an advocate’s file measured in seasons. Figures here are illustrative assumptions; government charges sit on bpra.go.tz and Zatra’s fee on /pricing/.

Where the island file stalls

• The entry standing in a distributor’s name, discovered on the day that appointment is terminated.
• A power of attorney drafted for the Mainland agent, returned by BPRA for want of an island address for service.
• The proprietor’s name differing by a suffix between the island application and the incorporation papers.
• Classes transcribed from the BRELA certificate while the island business sells something else under the mark.
• Only the Mainland Journal watched, so an island opposition window closes against a squatter’s application.

What has moved since December 2025

The Mainland gained a border tool the island does not have when recordation commenced on 1 December 2025, widening the gap for any brand that imports. On the island, BPRA has consolidated company, business-name and industrial property registration in one agency and publishes the Zanzibar Industrial Property Journal, so searches and advertisements are now traceable from the Mainland.

Whether a regional or international designation of the United Republic reaches the island register is unsettled in practitioner commentary and belongs to a separate file. BPRA acts on its own statute and on what stands before it, so a national island application remains the safe course.

Desks this file does not replace

BRELA owns Cap. 326, the Mainland register and its Journal; BPRA owns the island register, the island Journal and the companies index. The Fair Competition Commission owns Mainland recordation; TRA owns customs at every port of the United Republic, the island’s included. Regulated product classes on Unguja and Pemba belong to ZFDA and to the Zanzibar Bureau of Standards. COSOTA owns Mainland copyright in label artwork; island copyright sits under its own instrument, a third question again. ZIPA owns the island investment certificate.

An island suit is carried by an advocate admitted in Zanzibar; Mainland admission is a different roll. Zatra prepares the applications, instructs agents on both sides and sequences these desks. It does not practise law, register a mark or issue a certificate, and no registration is guaranteed.

What to confirm before you act

• Both registers searched under the exact registered name and every class actually traded.
• BPRA’s current application form, fee schedule and opposition window, taken from the agency on the day of filing.
• Two renewal dates in the diary, each running from the date its own application was lodged.
• Whether the island channel sits on GN No. 487A of 2025, and who therefore holds the licence.
• Whether the product class puts ZFDA or the Zanzibar Bureau of Standards ahead of the registry.
• Who is instructed to appear in Zanzibar if the mark must be enforced.