IP registration & protection
Securing rights across the full range of intellectual property.
- Trademarks, service marks, and trade dress
- Patents and utility models
- Industrial designs and copyright
- Clearance searches, filing, and prosecution
Intellectual Property Advisory
Some rights are registered. Few are protected.
There is a difference between holding a certificate and holding a right that survives scrutiny. Provenance IP secures that difference, registering the right, keeping it as a living asset, and standing behind it when it is questioned. For the brand owners and innovators building something worth protecting, across Kenya and beyond.
Standing · Advocate, High Court of Kenya Reach · Nairobi · Shanghai Enquiries · Open
Services · Registration · Protection · Enforcement
From registration to enforcement, the full life of a right.
Intellectual property work runs in three movements: securing rights properly, managing them as commercial assets, and resolving the disputes that test them. This practice covers all three, across trademarks, patents, industrial designs, copyright, and anti-counterfeiting.
IP portfolio management & strategy
Treating a portfolio as a commercial strategy, not a filing cabinet.
- Portfolio audits, renewals, and deadline management
- Licensing, franchising, and commercialisation
- IP valuation, assignment, and due diligence
- IP terms in commercial contracts
Dispute resolution, litigation & ADR
Resolving conflict by the route that serves the client, from negotiation to the courtroom.
- Infringement suits, for plaintiff or defendant
- Mediation and arbitration of IP disputes
- Opposition, revocation, and rectification
- Settlement, undertakings, and consent terms
Anti-counterfeiting & enforcement
Acting when counterfeit or infringing goods reach the market.
- Market investigation and evidence gathering
- Complaints to enforcement authorities
- Seizure, raid, and prosecution support
- Cease-and-desist and settlement
Customs & border measures
Stopping infringing goods before they enter the market at all.
- Recordation of rights for imports
- Detention and interception procedures
- Import and supply-chain risk review
Digital evidence & online infringement
Capturing infringement online in a form that survives objection.
- Evidence capture and preservation protocols
- Marketplace and platform takedowns
- Admissibility strategy for electronic records
- Domain name disputes
Cross-border & international IP
Protecting rights as goods and brands cross borders.
- Madrid Protocol filings from a Kenyan base
- Brand protection for imported and exported goods
- Manufacturer and supplier IP terms
- Counterfeit risk in international supply chains
Not sure where your exposure is?
Most brands discover the gap only when someone exploits it. A short conversation is usually enough to tell whether yours is secure.
Request a consultation → The practice
Advisory that holds up.
A right looks settled on the certificate. It becomes real only when someone challenges it, and most rights are, sooner or later. The question that decides the outcome is plain: can you prove what you claim to own?
Most IP advice is written from the textbook out, and reads well until it meets resistance. This practice works the other way, from the registry, the customs hall, and the disputes themselves back to the page. You learn early which evidence holds and which only looks like it will.
The result is plainer counsel: a clear recommendation, an honest view of cost and odds, and one steady hand on a right across its whole life, from filing to the day it must be defended.
- Admitted
- High Court of Kenya
- Focus
- Intellectual property, exclusively
- Grounding
- Frontline IP enforcement
- Method
- Evidence-led, built for the hearing
- Reach
- Kenya · East Africa · cross-border
- Languages
- English, Kiswahili
FMCG & Consumer Goods Pharmaceuticals Fashion & Apparel Technology & Fintech Manufacturing Agribusiness Media & Creative
How the work runs
A clear sequence, agreed before any step is taken.
01 · Assess
Assess
We start with the rights you hold and the risks you face, on paper and in the market.
02 · Advise
Advise
You receive a written position on options, cost, and likely outcome before any action.
03 · Act
Act
Filings, enforcement, and engagement with authorities, handled to a standard that holds in court.
04 · Review
Review
Rights are not protected once and then forgotten. We keep watch and adjust as the market moves.
The full lifecycle
One practice for the whole life of a right.
Most rights fail not because they were wrong, but because registration, management, and defence were handled by different people who never spoke to each other. Here they are one relationship, and that is what keeps a portfolio worth defending.
01
Secure
Clearance, filing, and prosecution across trademarks, patents, designs, and copyright, at home and through the Madrid Protocol.
Registration & Protection 02
Manage
Audits, renewals, valuations, and licensing, so a right stays alive, earns its keep, and is ready the day you need to rely on it.
Portfolio Strategy & Management 03
Resolve
Most disputes are better settled than fought. Negotiation and arbitration first, the courtroom when it is the only thing that works, for rights holders and for those wrongly accused.
Dispute Resolution & Enforcement Why it matters
Counterfeiting is not a nuisance. It is theft of your market.
Every counterfeit sold is a sale taken from the genuine brand, and worse, a customer who blames the genuine brand when the fake falls apart. The damage stays quiet until it surfaces in the revenue and the reputation at the same time.
Panic does not fix it, and neither does paperwork. What fixes it is a right secured before it is needed, evidence kept so it survives an objection, and a response timed to land while the goods are still there to seize. That is the work.
A registered mark is a promise of genuine origin. My work is to keep that promise worth something, and to make it hold when someone tests it. Fredrick Wainaina
Reach
Rooted in Nairobi. Working outward.
A Kenyan practice by admission and by instinct, acting for clients whose brands and disputes cross borders, from a base that understands both the local registry and the wider market.
01
One registry, mastered
Deep familiarity with the Kenyan IP system, from the registry counter to the courtroom, is what makes the advice practical rather than theoretical.
02
Borders that move goods, and fakes
Brands rarely stay in one country, and neither do the counterfeits. Protection is built to follow the goods, not stop at the port.
03
Local counsel, wider reach
Where a matter touches another jurisdiction, trusted counsel is engaged, so you keep one point of contact and one coherent strategy.
Insights
Practice notes, written from the field.
Articles and video briefings on brand protection, evidence, and the Africa–China corridor. Written for brand owners first, lawyers second.
The screenshot that lost the case: digital evidence under the Evidence Act
Kenyan courts admit electronic records under sections 78A and 106B of the Evidence Act Cap 80, but the two provisions pull in different directions. What a brand owner should capture, and how, before the listing disappears.
Read the note →Register in China before your manufacturer does
China is a first-to-file jurisdiction. For African brands sourcing goods there, the most expensive mistake is leaving the mark unregistered at the factory gate.
Read the note →You found counterfeits of your product. The first 48 hours.
What a rights holder should do, and refuse to do, between discovering counterfeit stock and instructing counsel. A field sequence drawn from enforcement practice.
Read the note →Recordation: the border is your cheapest enforcement venue
Kenya's anti-counterfeit framework requires recordation of IP rights for imported goods. Treated properly, the requirement is not a compliance burden but a standing instruction to intercept fakes before they reach a shelf.
Read the note →Nothing matches that search yet. Clear the filters, or write to the practice with the question; it may become the next note.
The Provenance Briefing
An occasional email when a new practice note is published. No marketing, no schedule kept for its own sake; a note goes out when there is something worth saying.
What you can expect
Commitments kept on every matter.
Advice you can act on
A clear written position with a recommendation, not a hedged opinion that hands the decision back to you.
Honest on cost and prospects
You hear the likely outcome and what it will cost to get there before you commit a shilling.
Built for the hearing
Every step assumes the matter may end up contested, so nothing done today quietly weakens your position tomorrow.
Discretion as standard
Brand disputes are commercially sensitive. What you tell me stays between us.
Common questions
Before you write, you may want to know.
No, but it is urgent. Unregistered brands have limited protection, and every day of trading builds value that is exposed. A clearance search and filing can usually begin within days, and interim steps can protect you while registration is pending.
Preserve evidence before anything else. Buy a sample, keep the receipt, photograph the stock and the premises if you safely can, and note the date. Do not confront the seller. The practice note on the first 48 hours sets out the full sequence, and then get in touch, because the steps after that determine whether enforcement succeeds.
Sometimes, and often not well. Kenyan courts admit electronic records under the Evidence Act Cap 80, but admissibility turns on how the record was made and who can speak to it. A bare screenshot taken casually is the weakest form. Capture the listing properly, early, and before the seller notices attention; the digital evidence note on this site explains how.
Two things matter most: register your mark in the country of manufacture before your supplier or a third party does, and put clear IP terms in the supply agreement. Many jurisdictions award rights to the first to file rather than the first to use, and brand owners often discover too late that someone has registered their mark at the source. This is a core part of the practice.
It depends on the matter. Defined work such as searches, filings, and agreements is quoted as a fixed fee. Enforcement and disputes are scoped in stages, so you approve each phase knowing its cost. You will never receive an invoice you did not see coming.
Yes. The practice acts for clients across East Africa and for international brand owners whose goods or disputes touch the Kenyan market. Most matters can be handled remotely, with local counsel engaged where another jurisdiction requires it.
Consultation
Tell me about the brand and the issue.
Enquiries receive a reply within two working days. Confidential from the first message.