(5) Any reference (however expressed) in this Act to an applicant for a patent, an applicant for the
registration of a design, a patentee or a design owner includes, unless the context otherwise requires, a
reference to any predecessors or successors in title and, where appropriate, to joint applicants, joint
patentees or joint owners, as the case may be.
25. (1) The rights of a patentee or design owner are infringed if another person, without the licensee of the
patentee or design owner, does or causes the doing of any act which that other person is precluded from doing
under section 6 or 9 of this Act, as the case may be.
(2) An infringement of the rights of a patentee or design owner shall be actionable at the suit of the patentee
or design owner in question; and in any action for such an infringement all such relief by way of
damages, injunction, accounts or otherwise shall be available to the plaintiff as is available in any
corresponding proceedings in respect of the infringement of other proprietary rights.
(3) If(a) a patent has been granted in respect of a process for the manufacture of a new product; and
(b) the same product is manufactured by a person other than the patentee,
the product shall in the absence of proof to the contrary be presumed to have been manufactured by that
process.
(4) The grantee of a licence under this Act from a patentee or design owner may by registered letter require
the licensor to institute proceedings under subsection (1) of this section in respect of any infringement
indicated by the grantee in the letter; and, if the licensor unreasonably refuses or neglects to institute the
proceedings, the licensee may institute them in his own name, without prejudice to the right of the
licensor to intervene in the proceedings.
26. (1) Jurisdiction to hear and dispose of legal proceedings under this Act is hereby vested in the Federal High
Court and , subject to this Act, and provisions of the Trade Marks Act applicable to legal proceedings under that
Act shall apply with the necessary modifications to legal proceedings under this Act.
(2) The court hearing proceedings under this Act may sit with and be advised by two assessors having expert
knowledge of matters of a technological or economic nature.
(3) The Chief Judge of the Federal High Court may make rules of court for the regulation of legal
proceedings under this Act if he thinks it necessary to do so.
27. (1) The Minister may, with a view to the fulfilment of a treaty, convention or other international arrangement
or agreement to which Nigeria is a party, declare by order in the Federal Gazette that any country specified in the
order is a convention country for purposes of this section.
(2) So long as there is in force an order under subsection (1) of this section declaring a country to be a
convention country, a patent application or a design application in Nigeria, if an earlier corresponding
application for the protection of an invention or the legislation of a design has been made in that
convention country, shall be treated as having been made on the date when that earlier application was
made:
Provided that this subsection shall not apply where the earlier application was made(a) in the case of an invention, more than twelve months; or
(b) in the case of a design, more than six months, before the application in Nigeria.
(3) Where a person has applied for the protection of an invention or the registration of a design by an
application which(a) in accordance with a treaty, convention or other international arrangement or agreement subsisting
between any two or more convention countries is equivalent to an application duly made in any one
of those convention countries; or