Hamidou KONE

Mr. KONE Hamidou, born on 26th December 1960 in Sikasso, Mali, is an Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Expert with the AfrIPI project at OAPI. Before joining the AfrIPI team last January, Mr. KONE was Managing Director and founder of the firm Koné Intellectual Property Consultancy (KCPI), an agency registered with the African Intellectual Property Organisation (OAPI). Mr. KONE was also a civil servant at OAPI from October 1995 to December 2020. During these 25 years of service at OAPI, Mr. KONE was, alternately, Director of Information Systems and Publication (2018-2020), Director of the OAPI Director General’s Cabinet (ADG, 2017-2018), Head of the Patents and Other Technical Creations Department (2014-2017), Head of the Distinctive Signs Department (2008-2014), Head of the IT and Statistics Department (2001-2008) and Patent Examiner (1995-2008). He also played an active part in the two previous revisions of the Bangui Agreement (OAPI's basic law). Before joining OAPI, Mr. KONE was a civil servant at the National Direction of Industries of Mali (1987-1995). Mr. KONE obtained a degree in Electromechanical Engineering from the Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs (ENI) in Bamako in 1986 and a 3rd Cycle Diploma in Management and Administration from Senghor University in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1994. He studied intellectual property law (long patent cycle) at the Centre d'Etudes Internationales de la Propriété Intellectuelle (CEIPI) at the University Robert Schuman in Strasbourg (France) in 2006 and obtained certificates (DL 205 and DL 305) on the protection of plant varieties from the Academy of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Currently based in Yaoundé on the premises of OAPI, Mr. KONE works as an Intellectual Property (IP) Enforcement Expert within the Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation in Africa (AfrIPI) project; a project co-funded by the Commission of the European Union and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and implemented by EUIPO. He is responsible for coordinating and implementing AfrIPI's IP activities. Mr. KONE is also a lecturer at OAPI's Denis Ekani Academy of Intellectual Property (APIDE), where he teaches courses on drafting patent specifications, drafting patent claims, specialised databases, layout-designs (topography) of integrated circuits and conducts tutorials on patent law. As part of his activities, Mr. KONE was Chairman of the WIPO Standing Committee on Information Technology (Geneva, Switzerland) from 2007 to 2008. He has also conducted several studies and led several projects at OAPI, including: a study on the possibility of OAPI acceding to the Madrid Protocol, the revision of OAPI's fee schedule, OAPI's 2018 2022 Strategic Plan, the processing of backlog files at OAPI, and the development of IT master plans (2001) and the information system master plan (2018-2019). Mr. KONE has produced several articles and conference papers on intellectual property (Cf. Internet Hamidou KONE OAPI, DOU).