For years a Zambian advertising agency, law firm or security company could build a reputation but not formally register the mark that carried it. The country’s trademark system protected goods, not services. That gap has now closed. Zambia’s Trade Marks Act No. 11 of 2023 became fully operational for services in February 2026, opening Classes 35 to 45 and allowing service providers, from advertisers and financiers to caterers, lawyers and security firms, to register service marks for the first time.

The Gap: A Goods-Only System in a Services Economy

The old framework was a product of its era, designed when brand value sat mostly in physical goods. A service business could trade under a name and invest in its reputation, but it could not register that name as a trade mark in the way a manufacturer could. In practice this left a growing share of the economy, the service sector, without the cleanest route to protect its brand.

The mismatch had become hard to ignore. Services account for a large and rising share of Zambian output and employment, from banking and telecoms in Lusaka to tourism around Livingstone, yet the legal scaffolding for brand protection still assumed value lived in a tin, a bottle or a bag of fertiliser. The new Act corrects that by adopting the international classification of services. Classes 35 to 45 cover the spread of modern services: advertising and business management, financial services, construction, legal and security services, and more. The reform, set out in a legal analysis of Zambia’s new trade mark regime, brings the country’s system into line with how brand value is actually created today.

A reputation you cannot register is a reputation you cannot fully defend.

The Classes: What 35 to 45 Open

The practical content sits in those numbers. Class 35 covers advertising and business services; Class 36 reaches financial and real-estate services; the higher classes extend through to legal and security services and the everyday categories of food and hospitality. Each is now a basis on which a Zambian service firm can claim and defend a registered mark.

The significance is concrete for any service brand that competes on identity. A fintech, a logistics operator, a marketing agency or a private-security provider can now secure exclusive rights to its name and logo in its category, rather than relying on the weaker, slower protections of passing-off litigation. Passing-off, the common-law fallback, requires a business to prove reputation and damage in court each time, an expensive and uncertain route compared with pointing to a registration certificate. Registration converts a reputation into an asset that can be licensed, enforced and valued.

The service economy now has the same registry standing that goods have had for decades.

The Operator’s Move: Register Before You Need To

The opening of Classes 35 to 45 creates an early-mover dynamic. Trade-mark rights generally reward the first to file, so the firms that register promptly secure their categories before competitors or opportunists do. For an established Zambian service business, the risk of waiting is that someone else registers a confusingly similar mark first, leaving the original operator to litigate for a name it has used for years.

The administrative home for this is the Patents and Companies Registration Agency, and operators should treat the February 2026 opening as the start of a window rather than an open-ended option. A registered service mark strengthens contracts, supports franchising and makes a business easier to value in a sale or capital raise. For service founders who have built brand equity informally, the instruction is straightforward: file in the relevant class now, while the field is still clear.

The Wider Effect: A Cleaner Market to Compete In

The second-order benefit reaches beyond individual filings. A functioning service-mark registry makes the market more legible: buyers can distinguish established providers from imitators, lenders can take brands as collateral with more confidence, and disputes resolve against a documented record rather than competing claims of who used a name first. That clarity tends to reward firms that invest in quality and consistency, because the law now lets them capture the reputation they build instead of watching it be diluted.

For foreign service firms eyeing Zambia, a recognisable registration system also lowers the perceived risk of entry, which over time deepens competition and choice in the sectors the new classes cover.

Zambia’s brand law has finally caught up with its economy. The advantage goes to whoever registers first.