A trademark battle between Zap Africa, a rising crypto exchange, and fintech giant Paystack has opened a new front in Nigeria’s increasingly litigious tech space, one that has as much to do with branding as it does with the growing pains of an evolving ecosystem.
At the centre of the storm is the name “Zap,” which both companies claim as their intellectual property.
The confrontation, now marked by exchanged cease and desist letters, has spilt beyond legal filings into the court of public opinion, exposing what experts describe as deep intellectual property gaps in Nigeria’s startup culture.