Egypt is one of several countries that still require applicants to obtain legalisation of certain documents when filing patent, design or trademark applications in that country. Failure to file the legalised documents within the deadlines provided often lead to lapsing of the right in question.
Applicants are afforded the opportunity to file an appeal against the rejection of the application which is heard by the Appeals Committee.
Legalisation is a complex and time-consuming process, requiring signature, verification and authentication at various high levels of government and eventually signature by the Department of Foreign Affairs. In the past few years, we have seen increasingly delays in the processing of legalised documents for clients in certain countries often leading to complications in the processing of their applications in Egypt. In cases where the applicant could show that sufficient steps were taken to meet the deadline and that the failure to meet the deadline was unintentional and / or out of their control have typically been well received and the application reinstated.
However, it should be remembered that patent matters are dealt with separately to trademark and design matters and the approach to this issue has, in our experience not been consistent.
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