Houses Passes Bill on Trademarks and Geographical Indications

After a lengthy deliberation process, the House of Representatives(“House”)finally passed the Bill on Trademarks and Geographical Indications (“Bill”)on 27 October 2016. [1] In essence, the Bill aims to ensure healthy business competition, to protect both consumers and medium-, small-, and micro-scale enterprises, as well as to facilitate improvement within the industrial, trading and investment sectors through the revision of various obsolete provisions which were originally set out under Law No. 15 of 2001 on Trademarks (“Trademark Law”). [2] The Bill sets out a number of updated provisions which will now become part of an Indonesian trademark and geographical-indications framework. This framework incorporates a total of 109 articles. Due to the wide-ranging nature of this framework, this edition of Indonesian Legal Brief (ILB) will limit its discussions to the following matters: