Formalities

Es war noch nie so einfach, Gutes zu tun — machen Sie mit! Bildergalerie mit weiteren Veranstaltungsfotos. Secondly because Dennemeyer has identified the continent as a region where clients are reconsidering their level of protection in IP to plan for anticipated economic growth. Dennemeyer Africa is capable of offering a whole bundle of IP related legal and management services as well as software solutions covering the entire continent.

The range of services includes legal advice on branding in Africa and South Africa, patent and trademark searching, drafting, filing, prosecution, recordals, annuities and renewals, litigation, commercial IP, advice on pharmaceuticals labeling and packaging as well as IP portfolio management. Van Zyl is based in Europe for the sake of providing easy face to face contact and is available to travel to our clients or meet them at any of our offices in Luxembourg, Frankfurt or Munich.

For further information about the new practice group please contact Christophe van Zyl. In addition to the presentations, we exchanged views during round-table discussions. Our thanks go out to all our guests for making this event an inspiration. You can get two of the presentations here. Check out the gallery for more snapshots from the event.

Guests were offered a presentation about the exposed counterfeit goods and they had fun discovering a great diversity of reproductions. The tour was followed by an informal standing reception with hors d'oeuvres and drinks and proved to be a great start for this year's Annual Meeting. Check out the gallery to discover more about our evening. Frau Li besitzt einen wissenschaftlichen Hochschulabschluss M.

Im Anschluss folgte eine angeregte Diskussion unter den ca. The lecture was held by Ms. She holds an M. In her presentation she outlined that businesses active in industries in which intellectual property rights play an important role - especially where SEPs are involved - should expect close scrutiny from Chinese agencies as they continue to develop in this complex area. The lecture was followed by an excited discussion among the roughly 30 attendees — as well as by cool drinks. Further complementary evening lectures will follow and be announced at www.

For further question, please contact: Eine Entscheidung des Bundespatentgerichts aus dem September hat dem Nagetier jetzt auch den Weg bis zum Bundesgerichtshof geebnet. Aber der Reihe nach: Das Hauptproblem ist die unterschiedliche Behandlung von Vorrichtungs-Gebrauchsmustern und Verfahrens-Gebrauchsmustern. Kann man einen Verfahrenserfinder anders behandeln als den Erfinder einer Vorrichtung, der ein Patent und ein Gebrauchsmuster erhalten kann, ohne das Gleichheitsgebot des Art. Diese Frage liegt jetzt dem Bundesgerichtshof vor. The field mouse inhabits a wide range of habitats including grasslands and marshes, pastures and gardens, and urban areas.

As a consequence of a decision of the Bundespatentgericht Federal Patent Court of Germany from September with the keyword "field mouse bait station" it has also found its way to the Bundesgerichtshof German Federal Supreme Court. Bundespatentgericht recently confirmed the rejection of a utility model application to protect a method of catching mice with a bait station due to the fact that methods are not protectable as utility models under German Law. Utility models consist of an exclusive right granted for an invention that is similar to a patent right, but its main purpose is to achieve a faster registration than that of a patent by replacing examination and grant by simple registration.

In return, its lifespan is shortened. Not all countries offer this type of protection and their scope differs widely. From a historical point of view, the protection of utility models developed as a right parallel to the protection of patents. For further information please contact: In der Vergangenheit war es recht schwierig, geistige Eigentumsrechte in Japan wiederherzustellen. In seinen Richtlinien zur Wiederherstellung schildert das JPA auch konkrete Beispiele, in denen eine Wiederherstellung akzeptiert, bzw. Dazu zitieren die Richtlinien folgende Beispiele: Es ist daher unbedingt erforderlich, die Terminfristen mit besonderer Sorgfalt zu behandeln.

Kontaktieren Sie Kazuya Sekiguchi unter: To better satisfy the needs of its clients and expand its workforce, Dennemeyer France is happy to announce its move to a bigger office. We are also happy to inform you that we have created two generic email addresses to allow you to contact us more easily:. For any new business inquiries do not hesitate to contact us. Traditionally, it has been difficult to restore IP rights in Japan. There have been almost no cases where restoration was admitted after a failure to meet a deadline. However, it is still not clear whether it has actually become easier to reinstate lost IP rights or not.

According to the revised rules relating to restoration of IP rights, failure to meet the deadlines of the following procedures can be saved:. As mentioned above, there needs to be a justifiable reason for not complying with the time limit in order for the lapsed IP rights to be restored. In the Guidelines for Restoration published by the JPO, examples in which restoration is admitted or not admitted are exemplified.

Whether the reason for missing a deadline is a justifiable reason depends on whether the reason was predictable. If the reason is predictable it cannot be justifiable. That is, a lapsed IP right cannot be restored when the reason for missing the deadline was predictable. Taking the absence of the representative due to scheduled hospitalisation, it seems that, according to the Guidelines, the JPO will regard it as scheduled hospitalization if the person could inform his absence to someone in advance.

That is to say, it is regarded as unpredictable only when the person representative is suddendly admitted to hospital and had no chance to inform his absence to any other person. In this case, the representative had two days to inform his absence to the applicant, but the EPO admitted restoration under this condition. The guidelines illustrate in which cases the restoration will or will not be admitted as follows: As mentioned above, restoration cannot be admitted if wrong data was inputted and no substantial measure was taken.

This means that if the deadline was missed because of human error, such as incorrect data inputting, without substantial measures such as double checking, it would be impossible to restore the IP right. On the other hand, in Japan it seems that an isolated mistake in a normally satisfactory system will not be a ground for restoration because it is required that there was a specific situation making it impossible to avoid the mistake, according to the Guidelines. The example of the specific situation listed in the guidelines is so special that the hurdle for the request of restoration to be admitted seems to be still high in Japan.

For example, a responsible person suddenly becomes ill in bed and cannot work for a while red period inFigure 1 and his colleague could know this fact and thus the colleague could know the risk of missing a deadline. In this case, the restoration cannot be admitted unless the colleague tried to avoid missing the deadline accordingly even if the other requirements necessary measures were taken in advance and the request for the restoration was filed in an appropriate period are met.

The JPO states that the restoration may be admitted if there is a justifiable reason for not complying with the time limit and said justifiable reason can be considered similar to the due care criteria adopted in the EPO. However, according to the examples listed in the guidelines, it seems to be stricter in Japanese practice than in the European practice for the restoration to be admitted. Therefore, it is necessary to take care of deadlines in a specifically careful manner.

He is active in the area of intellectual property law since and he is qualified as a M. His areas of expertise are chemistry, pharmaceutics, lasers spectroscopics. You can contact Mr. Notre nouvelle adresse est:. Businesses active in industries where intellectual property rights play an important role - especially where Standard Essential Patents SEPs are involved - should expect close scrutiny from Chinese agencies as they continue to develop their approach in this complex area.

Yuan Li will summarize the key enforcement activities of competition law in China, particularly focus on SEPs and how they relate various issues. If this issue is of interest for you, join us at our Munich office. The lecture is followed by a drinks reception. Und was passiert in Deutschland? Sie wachsen schnell — und wir ziehen mit.

Wir ziehen deshalb am Dienstag, You are growing rapidly — and so are we. In light of our global expansion, our Munich offices have become too small for our needs. As of Tuesday, July 19 , we will be serving our clients from a new location. Our new address is: We kindly request you update our contact details accordingly.

Our telephone and fax numbers stay unchanged. Are you interested in a personal appointment? Das Ranking basiert auf einer Umfrage unter tausenden deutschen Kollegen. Unsere Patentanwaltskanzlei ist auf dem richtigen Weg, das zeigt sich auch in unserem starken Wachstum und unserer ungebremsten globalen Expansion. Par ailleurs, le Dr. Our patent law firm is on the right track, which is also reflected by our strong growth and our ongoing global expansion.

His areas of expertise include physics, physical chemistry, optics, lasers, biotechnology, medical devices and software. It was a good opportunity to get to know the next generation of IP experts that will join the market in the upcoming months. The championship ended last month and he succeeded in defeating his anonymous opponent in the Final Battle on Monday, June 27th. Unser Dank gilt auch all den anderen Spielern weltweit aus dem Bereich geistiges Eigentum! Many players have used their superpowers to test their knowledge about patents and trademarks and were having fun playing the online version of the popular Dennemeyer IP Quiz Championships.

In the end, the two leading players competed against each other to win the prize. He will receive his iPad in Chicago soon. Thanks to all the other players from all over the IP world! Stay tuned for our next challenge — this was just the beginning. Enjoy summer with us!

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After short presentations on current IP trends held in German language our complimentary workshops offer you a good opportunity to discuss the following topics:. After the presentations there will be plenty of time for discussions, networking and cool drinks — with a fantastic view. Exclusively for summer , Dennemeyer continues its high demand webinar series.

These webinars provide the tools and information for you to save key resources — your time and money. Join the webinar s to question the experts directly and find out what fellow intellectual property professionals are asking. Learn more about the five webinars in July and August and register today. Are you a law firm that has been using the same process for years?

Curious on how you can save time, resources, and ultimately cost? In this webinar, Leon Steinberg discusses an outsourced model to record transfers and the associated cost savings. Why outsource this process? You can greatly reduce internal costs; and if you are a law firm, greatly increase profits. Watch the recorded webinar today. Benutzt Ihre Anwaltskanzlei die gleichen Prozesse bereits seit Jahren? Dennemeyers Webseminar am Weshalb sollte dieser Prozess ausgelagert werden?

Sehen Sie sich noch heute diese Aufzeichung des Webseminars an. Pourquoi sous-traiter ce processus? Les points importants de ce webinaire comprennent:. At INTA it was almost impossible not see the Dennemeyer booth - the biggest and highest booth of all and placed in the very center of the exhibition area. Watch the clip with the interview and shots of the impressive booth here.

Angeletics Work in Progress

Sehen Sie den clip mit dem Interview und Bildern unseres beeindruckenden Messestands hier. Luxembourg-based leading intellectual property management service provider Dennemeyer Group reaffirms its commitment to the European market by relocating their Bracknell office to Reading, United Kingdom. Reading continues to score high on a number of key economic indicators such as economic contribution per worker and number of businesses per capita: As of Thursday, June 9, , our Reading office's address is: By optimizing our presence in the UK, we will serve as a direct point of contact for UK companies, corporations and law firms, addressing their IP needs and providing specialized advice.

This is a continuation of the global expansion strategy of Dennemeyer Group and a strong commitment to the UK, which was initiated over 40 years ago. Dennemeyer set up their first overseas office in Stockport, UK in and established a team which handled the first computer-based patent annuity payments in the world. Am Samstag, den We kicked off the INTA meeting with a fun and adventurous evening observing the alligators, bobcats, raccoons and other wild animals.

Guests had the opportunity to enjoy the natural attractions while experiencing the excitement of being on an airboat. This was the perfect way to relax and have fun before starting INTA. This was a great opportunity for our team and clients to get together and enjoy food, drinks and a beautiful show.

Cela ne va pas changer. Es gibt zwei bedeutende Faktoren, die zur Beschleunigung des Verfahrens zum Einreichen eines Einspruchs beitragen sollen. Readers will probably know that an opposition against a European Patent can be filed within nine months after grant. This will not change. Readers will probably also know that the opposition procedure can be quite lengthy so that years might pass before a decision is rendered by the first instance. There are two major factors which shall contribute to speeding up the opposition procedure.

Firstly, contrary to the former practice, extensions of time limits will be granted only in exceptional cases with duly substantiated requests. Secondly, when communicating the reply to an opposition from the patent proprietor to the opponent, the Opposition Division will at the same time prepare the next action. This next action will normally be the issuance of summons to oral proceedings. For further information and help, please feel free to contact ckoester dennemeyer-law. First of all, it is important to note that this would be the first time in the history of the EU that a Member State leaves the EU, thus it is still not clear how this would actually work on a practical level.

The Member State should notify the EU Council and both parties will conclude an agreement setting the arrangements and further relation between the country and the Union. After the Member State gives notice of its withdrawal, there is a two-year term for the treaties of the Union to cease their effects, unless the parties reach an agreement before the two-year term.

However, this term might be extended by both parties. Regarding copyright protection, a Brexit would not have any major consequences, since copyright protection is not fully harmonized in the EU as it is. Further, copyright protection is mainly territorial and the UK is member to several International Treaties that cover copyright, thus they it would keep applying their national laws based on international minimum standards of protection. First, it is worth highlighting that the protection of national Patents as well as national Trademark registrations would of course remain unchanged.

However, obtaining UK approval for the agreement on a Unified Patent Court might prove to be a challenge, since a Brexit would very likely slow down the implementation of the UPC. Further, supplementary protection certificates for medicinal products are regulated by EU regulation N.

An applicant could of course still file an EU application but would additionally have to file a separate national UK application. Moreover, according to Article Furthermore, a Brexit would necessitate transitional provisions for current EU Trademark and Designs registrations for converting these rights into national UK rights, if the owner wishes to maintain protection of such rights in the UK. Further, it would have to be decided if their rights once converted into national UK rights will keep their EU filing date. For now, IP owners should simply be aware that if a Brexit happens -they might face consequences with regard to the protection of their UK IP rights and that they may further have to take additional measures if they want to maintain their IP rights.

Until a decision has been made, we can of course not give comprehensive advice on how to proceed, but can only point out the potentially controversial issues. We will of course look into these issues in more detail once the corresponding decisions have been made. Download the PDF article here. Juni in Ilmenau statt. Thema ist Big Data — Chancen und Herausforderungen. Schreiben Sie Philipp Hammans unter: Dennemeyer will have a booth at the event. Der Workshop findet am Donnerstag, den 2. The Dennemeyer Group organizes a complementary workshop for everyone interested in the future Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court.

Our expert speaker will share the latest developments with you and present some interesting case studies. After the workshop, we invite you to further discuss this topic with your colleagues and network over a drink. Did you have to read that twice? On April 14, , Dr. In this webinar you will discover three key items:. Watch the recorded, on-demand webinar today. Simply watch this short webinar to discover how. Besides we have prepared a special cinematic highlight for you — of course not without a decent amount of popcorn! After the show test your IP knowledge in our daily Dennemeyer IP Quiz championships and win exclusive prizes for your family at home.

If you would like to arrange a meeting with our experts or a demonstration of our software tools or online portals before the conference, please contact us at inta dennemeyer. Starting April 11 th your knowledge power will be tested in two parallel rounds one for each category and the two leading players of Patents and Trademarks will compete in the Final Battle, which will be a combination of both categories, at the end of May. Win the battle and the iPad is yours! Come and play at: Since he was the first US President to visit this mother country of cigars and rum.

However, the arguably most powerful man on earth was only an opening act. On 25 March, the Rolling Stones played their first ever concert in Havana. One takeaway is that US Presidents come and go - but the Stones stay forever. Another crystal clear message is that Cuba is opening-up. Exporting companies should therefore start rethinking about their Intellectual Property strategy for the Cuban market. The first question is of course which protective IP rights are available in Cuba.

We at Dennemeyer have long-standing contacts with our colleagues in Cuba and are looking forward to play a part in the improvement of the economic relations with Cuba, with our focus in this regard being of course Intellectual Property. But we will also keep monitoring other developments on Cuba. Rumor has it that Sir Paul McCartney will be the next music legend to pay a visit to the Island for a gig. Check out our webinar to find out more about the upcoming changes to trademark protection in Cuba and Iran. For businesses today it is critical to safeguard sensitive data against the growing number of online and natural threats.

For data security, the operative words are confidence and transparency. Dennemeyer remains dedicated to security and takes extensive technical measures to protect client data when managing intellectual property portfolios. Due to the importance of the topic Dennemeyer will keep on publishing news and articles on data security and keep you informed.

Reinhold Nowak in Luxemburg. In this role he will also be the contact person for all media inquiries. The mainstays of professional services and software solutions for the management of patents and trademarks will in future be supplemented in particular by business ventures including consultancy and seminars on intellectual property. After graduating in economic and social history and communication science, Sebastian Deck trained as an editor at the German School of Journalism in Munich, combining this with postgraduate studies in Practical Journalism at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich.

The workshops took place in Warsaw in the Sheraton hotel. At the first part of the workshops, Ms. Afterwards, participants were divided into two groups representing two different companies interested in extending their current activity, but their peaceful existence in the European market was not possible without prior coexistence agreement conclusion. Although at the beginning it seemed impossible to reach an agreement in this regard, we are happy to inform that after a long and difficult discussion both groups managed to sign a coexistence agreement satisfactory for both sides.

We received positive feedback from participants who especially appreciated the possibility to actively participate in the discussion. The Forums feature panel discussions and explore and discuss best practices for managing IP costs. Hear real world experiences from leading companies on how they have managed their IP budgets. These complimentary events are approved for 3. Space at each location is very limit. Learn more and reserve your spot today. This move signals the rapid growth experienced over the past year.

The new address is W. Madison, Suite , Chicago IL This growth is projected to continue throughout Should you have any questions on the relocation, please feel free to contact us. We look forward to seeing and serving you at the improved office surroundings. The new legislation enters into force on 23 March In order to avoid inadequate scope of protection, the owners of the above categorized trademarks have been given a possibility to file a declaration to the Office by 24 September , specifying the exact goods and services intended to be covered by that application.

If no Declaration is filed before the deadline, those trademarks will be deemed to cover only the goods and services described in the literal meaning of the class heading. Please do not hesitate to contact us at: Do you know the costs of publishing a European patent validation in Morocco?


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Since the beginning of March , European patents can be validated in Morocco according to the agreement between the European Patent Organisation and the government of the Kingdom of Morocco. But the exact fees for the publication of a validation have not been published by the EPO until now. As leading provider of professional services and solutions for the IP sector, Dennemeyer has found out the publication fee prior to its official publication.

As a result of the Iran nuclear deal signed last year, economic sanctions on the Middle-Eastern country have been lifted on January 16, Governmental authorities and industry organizations were quick to welcome this step in opening up the Iranian economy to international trade and investment.

For example, the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce and the European-Iranian Business Alliance released statements expressing their hope that business relations with Iran will be flourishing again in the future. With the start of a hopefully new and long-lasting period of good business relations with Iran, exporting companies should start rethinking about their intellectual property strategy for the Iranian market.

The first question is of course which protective IP rights are available in Iran. We at Dennemeyer have a long-standing relationship with our colleagues in Iran. Furthermore, we have experienced that centralized formalities procedures, especially with regards to notarization, can help clients move forward their IP projects almost everywhere and in fact in Iran. During the sanctions, we helped clients, some of them U.

With these recent developments in mind, we are looking forward to playing our part in normalizing the economic relations with Iran, with our focus being of course the field of intellectual property.

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For further information and help, please feel free to contact me via e-mail: In December we pledged to donate 1 euro for every correct answer submitted in our IP Quiz. Thanks to the overwhelming response we received from players, we have made a donation totaling 15, euros to the German office of Doctors Without Borders. The donated amount was handed over on January 12, in the presence of Dr. Doctors Without Borders was represented by Andrea Stegmeir, who shared with us her first-hand experience helping those in need in Angola. Doctors Without Borders is an international humanitarian organisation providing assistance to vulnerable communities, victims of natural disasters and armed conflicts.

Every year Doctors Without Borders sends around 2, doctors, nurses, logisticians, water-and-sanitation experts, administrators and other professionals to work alongside approximately 31, locally hired staff. Together they run medical projects in more than 60 countries around the world. The organisation spent million euros on humanitarian activities in ; performing over 8 million outpatient consultations, aiding over thousand severely malnourished children, and performing over 81, major surgical interventions.

We are truly overwhelmed by the amazing response we received from our fellow industry professionals, and would like to thank everybody who played the IP Quiz over December. Below are 12 costly and commonly shared trade mark misunderstandings. Not all trade marks are created equal. To evaluate the strength of a proposed mark, it is critical to understand that trade marks are viewed within a spectrum of distinctiveness. A trade mark may be compartmentalised into four main categories: On one end of the distinctiveness spectrum, generic terms are common words that name goods or services; these are incapable of functioning as trade marks.

Registration of a generic term would prevent others from rightfully utilising the common word and serve no source identification function. Moving up the band, a mark is considered merely descriptive if the primary significance of the term immediately describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, feature, function or purpose of the specifically delineated goods or services. Although adopting a descriptive mark simplifies marketing efforts by conveying features of the product or service to the purchaser, it also presents hurdles at both the registration and enforcement stages.

Common examples of descriptive marks include Arthriticare for arthritis medication , Car Freshener for car deodoriser , and World Book for encyclopedias. Suggestive trade marks indirectly refer to the goods or services with which they are associated. The mark requires an intellectual leap, imagination, thought or perception in order for the consumer to reach a conclusion as to the nature of the goods or services. For example, Coppertone for tanning lotion and Chicken Of The Sea for tuna are considered suggestive marks. Traditionally, marketing professionals prefer suggestive marks due to their inherent ability to evoke ideas in the minds of consumers, suggesting the nature of the goods or services offered.

By subconsciously linking a mark to a product or service, this approach enhances brand awareness while reducing costs associated with marketing campaigns. However, a fine line separates descriptive and suggestive trade marks. What a marketer may deem suggestive, the examining attorney may find descriptive. D Arbitrary or fanciful: Finally, arbitrary or fanciful marks are afforded the broadest scope of protection. An arbitrary mark is a word that exists but has no meaning when used on the product itself, whereas a fanciful mark is a word not recognised by the dictionary.

For instance, the marks Pepsi and Exxon are deemed fanciful because they have no meaning or common usage. Alternatively, Apple used in connection with computers is considered an arbitrary mark because it is a known term used in an uncommon fashion. For instance, other companies may own common law rights that compromise the value and availability of a trade mark. Common law rights arise from actual use of a mark in commerce even absent federal registration. Although federal registration affords additional rights that are unavailable under the common law scheme, rights still develop without registration.

These limited rights are cabined to the geographic area in which the mark is used. Within that specific territory, rights are based on the priority of use of a mark. Occasionally, a federal registrant may not be the first user of a trade mark in a specific territory; therefore, an unregistered prior user may enjoy superior rights. Thus, when applying for a trade mark, even a company with common law rights may file an opposition based on first use in commerce.

Further, if the USPTO has deemed a trade mark cancelled or abandoned, that designation does not ensure that your agency may use the mark without complications.

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A mark may be deemed cancelled or abandoned for a bundle of reasons. As stated above, trade mark rights continue at the common law level if a company continues to employ their mark in commerce. There are many sources in addition to the USPTO, such as common law sources, state trade mark registries and industry publications.

Read the full article as PDF. Our international team of patent and trademark attorneys is admitted to practice before the Patent and Trademark Offices of several additional European and non-European jurisdictions e. As a well-reputed and reliable intellectual property partner for multinational corporations and small and medium sized companies across industries for more than 55 years, the jury has recognized our pan-European footprint and our ability to deliver accurate and top-tier legal services to our European and non-European clients.

The proposed reformed rules for Community trademarks are currently under discussion by the European Parliament. The Community trademark CTM was created 15 years ago and has remained substantially unchanged. A draft text for the reform was prepared and in April the European Parliament, Commission and Council reached an agreement. The changes are being reviewed by the parliament again, but substantial changes to the last version of the text are not likely.

The reform is expected to come into force in the second quarter of All country members of the EU will then have three years to transpose the changes. Trademark applicants and the attorneys representing them will have to get used to a new terminology. The applicants for trademarks in only one class will now pay less: However, the costs will now be higher if a trademark applicant wants to protect its trademark in three classes: Concerning the conditions of registrability of a trademark in the EU, the concept of graphical representation has been removed from the conditions of an EUTM.


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This opens the doors to the protection of non-conventional trademarks, in particular sounds and smells. In accordance with OHIM and other national offices, the UK Intellectual Property Office IPO held that listing the headings for a class amounted to claiming protection for the entire alphabetical list of goods and services in that class, even though not all of them were explicitly listed and some were not even covered by the literal meaning of the class headings.

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Free Publication of your term paper, essay, interpretation, bachelor's thesis, master's thesis, dissertation or textbook - upload now! Register or log in. Our newsletter keeps you up to date with all new papers in your subjects. Request a new password via email. Tageszeitung und Social Media: Designing an Effective Com Mai-Komplex" - Die linke Szene Berlins als " Effects of the two World Wars on the African Continent. Der Hostile Media Effect. Was world war 2 a "good war"? From Cyber Bullying to Cyber Coping: The Misuse of Mobile Technolog You'll Believe a Man Can Fly?

Comparing Media Systems and Voter Turnout. Sexism in the Media and their Effects. Upload your own papers! Earn money and win an iPhone X. Upload Papers, win an iPhone X. Each new text counts as one lot! Publish now - it's free. I grasped how others came to the matter at hand directly, and who made a set of arguments succinctly and cogently. I observed how some speakers used emotion and dramatic language, and tried to move the audience with such techniques, while other speakers were sober and even, and shunned emotion.

At first, I was astonished by the vehemence — and candor — with which people criticized the regent. He was not above criticism — in fact, he was often the principal target of it. But no matter how flagrant the charge, the regent simply listened, not defending himself, showing no emotion at all. The meetings would continue until some kind of consensus was reached. They ended in unanimity or not at all. Unanimity, however, might be an agreement to disagree, to wait for a more propitious time to propose a solution. Democracy meant all men were to be heard, and a decision was taken together as a people.

Majority rule was a foreign notion. A minority was not to be crushed by a majority. Only at the end of the meeting, as the sun was setting, would the regent speak. His purpose was to sum up what had been said and form some consensus among the diverse opinions. But no conclusion was forced on people who disagreed. If no agreement could be reached, another meeting would be held.

At the very end of the council, a praise-singer or poet would deliver a panegyric to the ancient kings, and a mixture of compliments to and satire on the present chiefs, and the audience, led by the regent, would roar with laughter. As a leader, I have always followed the principles I first saw demonstrated by the regent at the Great Place. I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion.

He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind. It was at Mqhekezweni that I developed my interest in African history. I learned of these men from the chiefs and headmen who came to the Great Place to settle disputes and try cases. Though not lawyers, these men presented cases and then adjudicated them. Some days, they would finish early and sit around telling stories. I hovered silently and listened. Their speech was formal and lofty, their manner slow and unhurried, and the traditional clicks of our language were long and dramatic.

At first, they shooed me away and told me I was too young to listen. Later they would beckon me to fetch fire or water for them, or to tell the women they wanted tea, and in those early months I was too busy running errands to follow their conversation. But, eventually, they permitted me to stay, and I discovered the great African patriots who fought against Western domination. My imagination was fired by the glory of these African warriors. The most ancient of the chiefs who regaled the gathered elders with ancient tales was Zwelibhangile Joyi, a son from the Great House of King Ngubengcuka.

Chief Joyi was so old that his wrinkled skin hung on him like a loose-fitting coat. His stories unfolded slowly and were often punctuated by a great wheezing cough, which would force him to stop for minutes at a time. Chief Joyi was the great authority on the history of the Thembus in large part because he had lived through so much of it. But as grizzled as Chief Joyi often seemed, the decades fell off him when he spoke of the young impis, or warriors, in the army of King Ngangelizwe fighting the British.

In pantomime, Chief Joyi would fling his spear and creep along the veld as he narrated the victories and defeats. When he first spoke of non-Xhosa warriors, I wondered why. I was like a boy who worships a local soccer hero and is not interested in a national soccer star with whom he has no connection. Only later was I moved by the broad sweep of African history, and the deeds of all African heroes regardless of tribe.

Chief Joyi railed against the white man, who he believed had deliberately sundered the Xhosa tribe, dividing brother from brother. The white man had told the Thembus that their true chief was the great white queen across the ocean and that they were her subjects. But the white queen brought nothing but misery and perfidy to the black people, and if she was a chief she was an evil chief.

Chief Joyi said that the African people lived in relative peace until the coming of the abelungu, the white people, who arrived from across the sea with fire-breathing weapons. Once, he said, the Thembu, the Mpondo, the Xhosa, and the Zulu were all children of one father, and lived as brothers. The white man shattered the abantu, the fellowship, of the various tribes. The white man was hungry and greedy for land, and the black man shared the land with him as they shared the air and water; land was not for man to possess. I did not yet know that the real history of our country was not to be found in standard British textbooks, which claimed South Africa began with the landing of Jan Van Riebeeck at the Cape of Good Hope in It was from Chief Joyi that I began to discover that the history of the Bantuspeaking peoples began far to the north, in a country of lakes and green plains and valleys, and that slowly over the millennia we made our way down to the very tip of this great continent.

I was assisted by Mr. Festile, the induna at the Chamber of Mines, who was once again playing a fateful role in my life. On his own initiative he had decided to offer me free accommodation in the mining compound. Few spoke English, and the lingua franca was an amalgam of many tongues known as Fanagalo. There, I saw not only flare-ups of ethnic animosity, but the comity that was also possible among men of different backgrounds. Yet I was a fish out of water there. Instead of spending my days underground, I was studying or working in a law office where the only physical activity was running errands or putting files in a cabinet.

Because the WNLA was a way station for visiting chiefs, I had the privilege of meeting tribal leaders from all over southern Africa. I recall on one occasion meeting the queen regent of Basutoland, or what is now Lesotho , Mantsebo Moshweshwe. I asked them about Jongilizwe, and for an hour I seemed to be back in Thembuland as they told colorful tales about his early years.

The queen took special notice of me and at one point addressed me directly, but she spoke in Sesotho, a language in which I knew few words. Sesotho is the language of the Sotho people as well as the Tswana, a large number of whom live in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The question embarrassed and sobered me; it made me realize my parochialism and just how unprepared I was for the task of serving my people.

I had unconsciously succumbed to the ethnic divisions fostered by the white government and I did not know how to speak to my own kith and kin. Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs. I again realized that we were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another. Since the turn of the century, Africans owed their educational opportunites primarily to the foreign churches and missions that created and sponsored schools.

Under the United Party, the syllabus for African secondary schools and white secondary schools was essentially the same. The mission schools provided Africans with Western-style English-language education, which I myself received. We were limited by lesser facilities but not by what we could read or think or dream. Yet, even before the Nationalists came to power, the disparities in funding tell a story of racist education.

The government spent about six times as much per white student as per African student. Education was not compulsory for Africans and was free only in the primary grades. Less than half of all African children of school age attended any school at all, and only a tiny number of Africans were graduated from high school. Even this amount of education proved distasteful to the Nationalists. The Afrikaner has always been unenthusiastic about education for Africans. To him it was simply a waste, for the African was inherently ignorant and lazy and no amount of education could remedy that.

The Afrikaner was traditionally hostile to Africans learning English, for English was a foreign tongue to the Afrikaner and the language of emancipation to us. One morning, several days after my meeting with Bram and Joel, we were taken to the head office.

The head office was only about a quarter of a mile away and was a simple stone structure that resembled our own section. Once there, we were lined up to have our fingerprints taken, which was routine prison service business. But while waiting, I noticed a warder with a camera. After our fingerprints had been taken, the chief warder ordered us to line up for photographs. I motioned to my colleagues not to move, and I addressed the warder: The warder was taken aback by my request and was unable to offer any explanation or produce anything in writing from the commissioner of prisons.

He threatened to charge us if we did not consent to have our photographs taken, but I said that if there was no authorization, there would be no pictures, and that is where the matter remained. As a rule, we objected to having our pictures taken in prison on the grounds that it is generally demeaning to be seen as a prisoner. But there was one photograph I did consent to, the only one I ever agreed to while on Robben Island. One morning, a few weeks later, the chief warder, instead of handing us hammers for our work in the courtyard, gave us each needles and thread and a pile of worn prison jerseys.

We were instructed to repair the garments, but we discovered that most of these jerseys were frayed beyond repair. This struck us as a curious task, and we wondered what had provoked the change. The commanding officer announced that the two visitors were a reporter and photographer from the Daily Telegraph in London. He related this as if visiting members of the international press were a regular diversion for us. Although these men were our first official visitors, we regarded them skeptically. Firstly, they were brought in under the auspices of the government, and second, we were aware that the Telegraph was a conservative newspaper unlikely to be sympathetic to our cause.

The two journalists walked slowly around the courtyard, surveying us. We kept our heads down concentrating on our work. The prison service regulations were explicit that each prisoner was permitted to speak only for himself. This was done to negate the power of organization and to neutralize our collective strength. We objected to this role, but made little headway. We were not even permitted to use the word we when we made complaints. But during the first few years, when the authorities needed one prisoner to speak on behalf of others, that individual would be me.

I talked to the reporter, whose name was Mr. Newman, for about twenty minutes, and was candid about both prison and the Rivonia Trial. He was an agreeable fellow, and at the end of our talk, he said he would like the photographer to take my picture. I was reluctant, but in this case relented because I knew the photograph would only be published overseas, and might serve to help our cause if the article was even the least bit friendly.

I told him I would agree provided Mr. Sisulu could join me. The image shows the two of us talking in the courtyard about some matter that I can no longer remember. I never saw the article or heard anything about it. The reporters were barely out of sight when the warders removed the jerseys and gave us back our hammers.

The men from the Telegraph were the first of a small stream of visitors during those early months. There were stories in the press about the inhuman conditions on the island, about how we were being assaulted and tortured. These allegations embarrassed the government, and to combat them they brought in a string of outsiders meant to rebut these critical stories. We were briefly visited by a British lawyer who had argued for Namibian independence before the World Court , after which we were informed that a Mr. Hynning, a representative of the American Bar Association, would be coming to see us.

Americans were then a novelty in South Africa , and I was curious to meet a representative of so august a legal organization. On the day of Mr. The American arrived in the company of General Steyn, the commissioner of prisons, who rarely made appearances on the island. General Steyn was that unusual thing in the prison service, a polished and sophisticated man.

His suits were always of a fine quality and a fashionable cut. Yet General Steyn oppressed us by omission rather than commission. He basically turned a blind eye to what was happening on the island. His habitual absence emboldened the more brutal prison officials and gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. General Steyn nodded in my direction, and I stood up. In contrast to General Steyn, Mr. Hynning was a heavyset, unkempt man. I thanked him for visiting us and said we were honored by his presence. I then summarized our complaints, beginning with the central and most important one, that we were political prisoners, not criminals, and that we should be treated as such.

I enumerated our grievances about the food, our living conditions, and the work detail. But as I was speaking, Mr. Hynning kept interrupting me. When I made a point about the long hours doing mindless work, he declared that as prisoners we had to work and were probably lazy to boot. When I started to detail the problems with our cells, he interjected that the conditions in backward American prisons were far worse than Robben Island , which was a paradise by comparison. He added that we had been justly convicted and were lucky not to have received the death penalty, which we probably deserved.

Hynning perspired a great deal and there were those among us who thought he was not altogether sober. He spoke in what I assumed was a southern American accent, and had a curious habit of spitting when he talked, something none of us had ever seen before. Under the circumstances, it was difficult to keep tempers down. The men were angered by Mr. Normally, a visit of any kind lifted our spirits but the visit of Mr. Perhaps that is what the authorities wanted. To meet someone with so impressive an affiliation and so little understanding was depressing. Hynning finally just turned and walked away without so much as a good-bye.

We were not sorry to see him go. Hynning for years afterward and many of the men imitated the way he spoke to comic effect. We never heard about him again, and he certainly did not win any friends on Robben Island for the American Bar Association. In jail, all prisoners are classified by the authorities as one of four categories: A is the highest classification and confers the most privileges; D is the lowest and confers the least.

The privileges affected by these classifications included visits and letters, studies, and the opportunity to buy groceries and incidentals — all of which are the lifeblood of any prisoner. It normally took years for a political prisoner to raise his status from D to C. We disdained the classification system. It was corrupt and demeaning, another way of repressing prisoners in general and political prisoners in particular.

We demanded that all political prisoners be in one category. Although we criticized it, we could not ignore it: If you protested that, as a D Group prisoner, you could receive only one letter every six months, the authorities would say, Improve your behavior, become a C Group prisoner, and you will be able to receive two letters every six months. If you complained that you did not receive enough food, the authorities would remind you that if you were in A Group, you would be able to receive money orders from the outside and purchase extra food at the prison canteen.

Even a freedom fighter benefits from the ability to buy groceries and books. If you were sentenced to eight years, you would generally be classified as D for the first two years, C for the next two, B for the following two, and A for the last two. But the prison authorities wielded the classification system as a weapon against political prisoners, threatening to lower our hard-won classifications in order to control our behavior. While I desired the privileges that came with higher classifications, I refused to compromise my conduct.

Every six months, prisoners were called before the prison board to have their classifications evaluated. The board was meant to assess our behavior in terms of prison regulations, but we found that it preferred to act as a political tribunal rather than a mere evaluator of behavior. During my first meeting with the board, the officials asked me questions about the ANC and my beliefs. Although this had nothing to do with the classification system, I was vain enough to answer and think that I might convert them to my beliefs.

It was one of the few times we were treated as human beings, and I for one responded. Later I realized that this was simply a technique on the part of the authorities to glean information from us, and I had fallen for it. Shortly afterward, we agreed among ourselves not to discuss politics with the prison board. As a D Group prisoner, I was entitled to have only one visitor, and to write and receive only one letter, every six months. I found this one of the most inhumane restrictions of the prison system.

But it was one of the facts of prison life. This was a restriction we not only found irksome but racist. The African sense of immediate family is far different from that of the European or Westerner. Our family structures are larger and more inclusive; anyone who claims descent from a common ancestor is deemed part of the same family.

It is always harder to cope with the disasters and tragedies one imagines than with the reality, however grim or disagreeable. A letter with ill tidings was always preferable to no letter at all. But even this miserable restriction was abused by the authorities. The anticipation of mail was overwhelming.

Mail call took place once a month, and sometimes six months would go by without a letter. To be allowed one letter in six months and then not to receive it is a great blow. What has happened to my wife and children, to my mother and my sisters? When I did not receive a letter I felt as dry and barren as the Great Karroo desert. Often the authorities would withhold mail out of spite. It required all my self-discipline not to explode at such times. Afterward, I would protest through the proper channels, and sometimes get it.

When letters did arrive, they were cherished. A letter was like the summer rain that could make even the desert bloom. When I was handed a letter by the authorities, I would not rush forward and grab it as I felt like doing, but take it in a leisurely manner. Though I yearned to tear it open and read it on the spot, I would not give the authorities the satisfaction of seeing my eagerness, and I would return slowly to my cell as though I had many things to occupy me before opening a letter from my family.

During the first few months, I received one letter from Winnie, but it was so heavily censored that not much more than the salutation was left. They began to use razors to slice out whole paragraphs. Since most letters were written on both sides of a single piece of paper, the material on the other side would also be excised. They seemed to relish delivering letters in tatters.

The censorship delayed the delivery of mail because warders, some of whom were not proficient in English, might take as long as a month to censor a letter. The letters we wrote were censored as well; they were often as cut up as the letters we received. At the end of August, after I had been on the island less than three months, I was informed by the authorities that I would have a visitor the following day. They would not tell me who it was. Walter was informed that he, too, would have a visitor, and I suspected, I hoped, I wished — I believed — that it would be a visit from Winnie and Albertina.

From the moment Winnie learned we had been brought to the island, she had been trying to arrange a visit. As a banned person, Winnie had to receive a special dispensation from the minister of justice, for she was technically not permitted to communicate with me. Even with the help of the authorities, visiting Robben Island was not an easy proposition. Visits were a maximum of thirty minutes long, and political prisoners were not permitted contact visits, in which the visitor and prisoner were in the same room.

Visits did not seem to be planned in advance by the authorities. If a family member was able to plan a visit in advance, the authorities would sometimes deliberately delay issuing a permit until after the plane had departed.

Wide range of connection options

Some men who came from poor families did not see their wives for many years at a time, if at all. I knew of men who spent a decade or more on Robben Island without a single visit. The visiting room for noncontact visits was cramped and windowless. One sat in a chair and looked through the thick, smudged glass that had a few small holes drilled into it to permit conversation. One had to talk very loudly to be heard. Later the authorities installed microphones and speakers in front of the glass, a marginal improvement. Winnie always dressed up for prison visits, and tried to wear something new and elegant.

It was tremendously frustrating not to be able to touch my wife, to speak tenderly to her, to have a private moment together. We had to conduct our relationship at a distance under the eyes of people we despised. I could see immediately that Winnie was under tremendous strain.

Seeing me in such circumstances must have been trying. Just getting to the island itself was difficult, and added to that were the harsh rituals of the prison, the undoubted indignities of the warders, and the impersonality of the contact. Winnie, I later discovered, had recently received a second banning order and had been terminated from her job at the Child Welfare Office as a result. Her office was searched by the police shortly before she was fired. The authorities were convinced that Winnie was in secret communication with me.

Winnie loved her job as a social worker. It was the hands-on end of the struggle: The banning and harassment of my wife greatly troubled me: I could not look after her and the children, and the state was making it difficult for her to look after herself. My powerlessness gnawed at me. Our conversation was awkward at first, and was not made easier by the presence of two warders standing directly behind her and three behind me.

Their role was not only to monitor but to intimidate. Regulations dictated that conversation had to be in either English or Afrikaans — African languages were forbidden — and could involve family matters only. Any line of talk that departed from the family and verged on the political might mean the abrupt termination of the visit. If one mentioned a name unfamiliar to the warders, they would interrupt the conversation, and ask who the person was and the nature of the relationship.

This happened often, as the warders were generally unfamiliar with the variety and nature of African names.

SOMMER USA Inc.

But their ignorance also worked in our favor: That first visit was important, for I knew that Winnie was anxious about my health: I quickly informed her that I was fine and she could see that I was fit, though a bit thinner than before. She, too, was thinner, something I always attributed to stress.

She was always dieting, and I was always telling her not to. It was impossible that half an hour had passed. But, in fact, he was right; visits always seemed to go by in the blink of an eye. I always felt like lingering after Winnie left, just to retain the sense of her presence, but I would not let the warders see such emotion. As I walked back to the cell, I reviewed in my head what we had talked about. Over the next days, weeks, and months, I would return to that one visit again and again.

I knew I would not be able to see my wife again for at least six months. As it turned out, Winnie was not able to visit me for another two years. At weekends, during our first year on the island, we were kept inside our cells all day except for a half hour of exercise. One Saturday, after returning from exercise in the courtyard, I noticed that a warder had left a newspaper on the bench at the end of the corridor.

He had become rather friendly to us, and I assumed that he had not left the newspaper there by accident. Newspapers were more valuable to political prisoners than gold or diamonds, more hungered for than food or tobacco; they were the most precious contraband on Robben Island. News was the intellectual raw material of the struggle. We were not allowed any news at all, and we craved it.

Walter, even more than myself, seemed bereft without news. The authorities attempted to impose a complete blackout; they did not want us to learn anything that might raise our morale or reassure us that people on the outside were still thinking about us. We regarded it as our duty to keep ourselves current on the politics of the country, and we fought long and hard for the right to have newspapers. One of the most reliable ways to acquire papers was through bribery, and this was the only area where I tolerated what were often unethical means of obtaining information.

The warders always seemed to be short of money, and their poverty was our opportunity. When we did get hold of a paper, it was far too risky to pass around. Possession of a newspaper was a serious charge. Instead, one person would read the paper, usually Kathy or, later, Mac Maharaj. Kathy was in charge of communications, and he had thought of ingenious ways for us to pass information. Kathy would go through the paper and make cuttings of relevant stories, which were then secretly distributed to the rest of us. Each of us would write out a summary of the story we were given; these summaries were then passed among us, and later smuggled to the general section.

When the authorities were particularly vigilant, Kathy or Mac would write out his summary of the news and then destroy the paper, usually by tearing it into small pieces and placing it in his ballie, which the warders never inspected. When I noticed the newspaper lying on the bench, I quickly left my cell, walked to the end of the corridor, looked in both directions, and then plucked the newspaper off the bench and slipped it into my shirt.

Normally, I would have hidden the newspaper somewhere in my cell and taken it out only after bedtime. But like a child who eats his sweet before his main course, I was so eager for news that I opened the paper in my cell immediately. Suddenly, an officer and two other warders appeared and I did not even have time to slide the paper under my bed. I was caught black-and-white-handed, so to speak. In this instance, the authorities were willing to call in an outside magistrate because they knew they had an open-and-shut case.

I offered no defense, and was sentenced to three days in isolation and deprivation of meals. I do not think that I was set up by the warder who left the newspaper on the bench, though some assumed I had been. At the hearing, the authorities grilled me as to how I got the newspaper, and I refused to answer.

The isolation cells were in our same complex, but in another wing. Although just across the courtyard, they felt enormously distant. In isolation, one was deprived of company, exercise, and even food: Rice water is simply water in which rice has been boiled. By comparison, our normal ration of pap seemed like a feast. The first day in isolation was always the most painful. One grows accustomed to eating regularly and the body is not used to being deprived. I found that by the second day I had more or less adjusted to the absence of food, and the third passed without much craving at all.

Such deprivation was not uncommon among Africans in everyday life. I myself had gone without food for days at a time in my early years in Johannesburg. As I have already mentioned, I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything. Did I make the right decision, was my sacrifice worth it? In solitary, there is no distraction from these haunting questions. But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances.

Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty. In those early years, isolation became a habit. We were routinely charged for the smallest infractions and sentenced to isolation. A man might lose his meals for a sidelong glance or be sentenced for failing to stand when a warder entered the room. Some PAC prisoners, who often flouted the rules simply for the sake of doing so, spent a great deal of time in isolation. The authorities believed that isolation was the cure for our defiance and rebelliousness.

The second time I was charged and spent time in isolation occurred shortly after the first. As I have mentioned, we were having great difficulty making our complaints heard. The remoteness of the prison made the authorities feel they could ignore us with impunity. They believed that if they turned a deaf ear to us, we would give up in frustration and the people on the outside would forget about us. One day we were working at the lime quarry when the commanding officer came to observe us, accompanied by a gentleman whom we at first did not recognize.

He is not to be confused with the Aucamp of Pretoria Local, who looked after us during the Rivonia Trial. The two men stood at a distance, watching us. Aucamp was a short, heavyset fellow in a suit rather than a military uniform. He normally came to the island on biannual inspections. On those occasions, we were ordered to stand at attention at the grille of our cells and hold up our prison cards as he walked by.

I put down my pick and began to walk over to them. The warders immediately became alarmed and moved toward me. I knew that I was violating regulations, but I hoped the warders would be so surprised by the novelty of my action that they would do nothing to stop me. That proved to be the case. No one called you. I continued to speak as the guards led me away. I was charged and, once again, I had no defense. The punishment this time was four days in isolation. There was a lesson in what I had done, a lesson I already knew but had disobeyed out of desperation.

No one, least of all prison officials, ever likes to have his authority publicly challenged. In order to respond to me, Aucamp would have had to humiliate his subordinate. Prison officials responded much better to private overtures. The best way to effect change on Robben Island was to attempt to influence officials privately rather than publicly. I was sometimes condemned for appearing to be too accommodating to prison officials, but I was willing to accept the criticism in exchange for the improvement.

If you are cold and want an extra blanket, you might petition the minister of justice, but you will get no response. I always tried to be decent to the warders in my section; hostility was self-defeating. There was no point in having a permanent enemy among the warders. It was ANC policy to try to educate all people, even our enemies: In general we treated the warders as they treated us.

If a man was considerate, we were considerate in return. Not all of our warders were ogres. We noticed right from the start that there were some among them who believed in fairness. Yet, being friendly with warders was not an easy proposition, for they generally found the idea of being courteous to a black man abhorrent.