“Domestic” IP refers to the laws which are internal to a state and apply to the people within that state.
Emejuo 20 – Attorney with an LLM in Intellectual Property and Technology Law from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Chukwuemezie Charles Emejuo, “What Is Domestic Intellectual Property (IP) Law: An Introduction,” My IP Law Guide, 2020, pp. 1, https://myiplawguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/WHAT-IS-DOMESTIC-IP-LAW-BY-C-C.-EMEJUO.pdf.
In understanding what Domestic IP Law means, we have to understand the context in which the word “domestic” is used. The English electronic dictionary defines domestic to mean “of or relating to home” and “internal to a specific country”. Adopting this definition, “domestic” qualifies activities peculiar to a locality which is home to some persons. Thus, an opposite of “domestic” will be “foreign” or “international”.
Therefore, Domestic IP Law will refer to the IP Laws of a region, state, or nation that applies to the people of such region, state, or nation. This is opposed to the International IP Laws. Here when we refer to the Domestic IP Law in this sense, we refer to the Domestic IP Law of States like Nigeria, Ghana, England, South Africa, Britain, USA, Cameroon, to mention but a few. For every State, reference must be made to its specific legislation, although the provisions of the law may be similar. There are, however, subsidiary legislations that may be made in a state to regulate IP practices, this class of legislations shall not be treated in this discourse. For the purpose of this discourse I shall identify the Domestic IP Laws of Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana and reference shall only be made to legislations. I encourage detailed discussions on them on later sessions.