Patents [No. 40 of 2016 65. (1) Subject to this Act, every patent shall be dated as of the date on which the specification was filed with the Registrar. (2) The date, referred to in subsection (1), shall be entered in the Register, in the prescribed manner, and inserted in the patent. (3) Subject to this Act, the duration of every patent granted shall be twenty years from the filing date of the application for the grant of a patent. 66. The Registrar shall, as soon as practicable, publish, in a prescribed manner, a notice of the grant of a patent, in the Industrial Property Journal. 67. A patentee or an exclusive licensee may, six months before the expiry of the term of a patent, apply to the Registrar for an extension of the term of a patent for a further term not exceeding two years on any of the following grounds: (a) where there are hostilities between Zambia or any country of the Commonwealth and any other country and the patentee has suffered loss or damage; or (b) where an act of God occurs and the patentee has not been able to work the patent. 68. The Minister shall prescribe an annual maintenance fee to be paid by a patentee for the maintenance of a patent entered in the Register in accordance with section ten. (2) A patent in respect of which the maintenance fee is due and not paid by the due date lapses and the invention in respect of which the patent was granted ceases to be protected. (3) Despite subsection (2), the Registrar may extend the period for the payment of the maintenance fee for six months subject to the patentee paying a prescribed administrative penalty to the Agency. 69. (1) Where the maintenance fee, provided for in section sixty-eight, remains unpaid, the protection of the invention by the patent shall lapse until the maintenance fee and penalty thereon, if any, have been paid, and the Registrar shall remove the patent from the Register. (2) The Agency is not liable with respect to any patent infringement committed between the date on which the protection of the invention lapsed and the date of the publication of an application for the restoration of the patent. (3) The Registrar shall publish, in the Industrial Property Journal, an invention that has ceased to be protected by a patent, as soon as practicable. 831 Date and duration of patent Publication of grant Extension of term of patent Maintenance fee Lapse of protection of patent on nonpayment of maintenance fee