The Somaliland Intellectual Property Office (SOMIPO) oversees Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues under the mandate of the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Tourism. The country has currently developed a legal regime for the protection of intellectual property rights even though, it has not a member of a number of major IPR treaties, such as the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) copyright treaty, the Berne Convention for Literary and Artistic Works, the Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks, and the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
which has been rebuilding its infrastructure and its nascent democracy since May 1991, is currently developing a modern law dealing with intellectual property. Somaliland does, however, consider itself bound by the international conventions that 1960 to 1991 Somali (Democratic) Republic has acceded to, as generally confirmed in Article 10 of the Constitution of the Republic, even those that have not been acceded to the Somali Republic. It remains the case, however, that whilst full compliance with and application of some of these conventions and involvement in their governing bodies is severely constrained by Somaliland’s lack of international recognition, there is a commitment on the part of Somaliland to abide, as far as it is allowed to do so, by the provisions of the above mentioned international conventions.
Intellectual Property (IP) Law is that area of law that relates to legal rights concerning creative effort or commercial reputation or goodwill. The (UN) World Intellectual Property Organisation WIPO mentions, on its website, that IP is divided into two categories: