Egypt: National intellectual property strategy in Egypt

National Intellectual Property Strategy

Egypt launched its National Strategy for Intellectual Property on September 21, 2022, in an official ceremony organized under the auspices of President El-Sisi, and inaugurated in the presence of Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly. The launch was attended by the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Director-General Daren Tang¹.

The duration of implementation of the Strategy is (5 Years) from September 2022-2027 and is based on the following principles:

• Respect of IP


• Equal opportunities, social justice and adherence to transparency standards


• Supporting competitiveness and preventing monopolistic practices


• Ensuring and consolidating freedom of thought and opinion, and the rights of artistic and literary creativity, developing talents, inducing innovation and scientific research, supporting and developing its institutions, fostering researchers and inventors, and protecting their acquired rights.


• Achieving the optimal balance between granting exclusive rights to encourage creativity, innovation and investment in various fields on the one hand and achieving the general interest of society in various aspects of life on the other.


• Governance and enhancement of institutional work in the authority to be established and entrusted with the competence of protecting IP rights


• The correlation between authority and responsibility, whereby the State Authorities are deemed responsible for carrying out their duties towards implementing the strategy and ensuring its effectiveness.

The strategy reflected the current status of IP-related rights which shows some weaknesses (i.e. SWOT analysis) such as lack of expertise and developed human resources, the lack of integration between science and industry research, as well as the absence of a comprehensive exclusive pool of IP assets owned by the state.

As to Patents, such weakness is noticeable from the 2021 statistics of the number of patent applications in Egypt, namely 2,225, including 881 from residents (Egyptian) and 1,344 from non-residents (foreigners). The report shows that the number of patent applications filed by the Egyptians is only 39% of the total applications in 2021. Moreover, although most of the applicants are companies (85%), few of them only are Egyptian companies.

Regarding the Utility models, although the IP law no. 82/2002 regulates this right for protecting minor inventions which are considered easily granted with fewer conditions and fees than patents, however, there is a very limited number of filings of utility models in Egypt. The awareness of this type of IP right is important, especially for natural Applicants and SMEs.