| (1) | The State President may, with a view to the fulfilment of a treaty, convention, arrangement or engagement, by proclamation in the Gazette declare that any country or group of countries specified in the proclamation is a convention country or are convention countries for the purposes of all or any of the provisions of this Act. |
| (2) | For the purposes of subsection (1) every territory for whose international relations another country is responsible shall be deemed to be a country in respect of which a declaration may be made under that subsection. |
| (3) | Any person who has applied for registration of a trade mark in a convention country, or his legal representative or assignee, shall, in priority to other applicants, be entitled to registration of the trade mark under this Act, and the registration shall have the same date as the date of the first application in the convention country: Provided that— |
| (a) | application is made within six months after the date on which the application was made in the convention country; and |
| (b) | nothing in this section contained shall entitle the proprietor of the trade mark to recover damages for infringements happening prior to the actual date on which the application was first advertised in the prescribed manner. |
| (4) | Where applications have been made for the registration of a trade mark in two or more convention countries, the period of six months referred to in subsection (1) shall be reckoned from the date on which the earliest of those applications was made. |
| (5) | Where a person has applied for protection for a trade mark by an application which— |
| (a) | in accordance with the terms of a treaty subsisting between any two or more convention countries, is equivalent to an application duly made in any one of those convention countries; or |
| (b) | in accordance with the law of any convention country, is equivalent to an application duly made in that convention country, he shall be deemed for the purposes of this section to have applied in any of those convention countries or in that convention country. |
| (6) | The registration of a trade mark shall not be invalidated by reason only of the use of the trade mark in the Republic during the period specified in this section as that within which application may be made. |
| (7) | The application for the registration of a trade mark under this section shall be made in the same manner as an ordinary application under this Act, except that proof of application in a convention country shall be established in the manner prescribed. |
| (8) | A right to priority as contemplated in subsection (3) may be assigned or otherwise transmitted. |
[General Note: Convention countries declared under Proclamation No. R.63 In Government Gazette 25334 of 5 August, 2003.]
