Brett McGuire

Brett McGuire: Intellectual Property Revamp Holds Much Promise

After almost a year’s delay, the Indonesian government’s long-anticipated overhaul of the intellectual property laws is back on track.

Later this month, Andy Sommeng, the director general of intellectual property rights, will finalize his proposed changes to the Trademark Law before shifting his attention to the Patent, Design and Copyright laws.

IP owners will be glad to hear that one of the director general’s top priorities is improving speed and efficiency at the IP office and the Commercial Court, which handles non-criminal IP cases.

Currently, it takes about two years to register a trademark. This means that businesses have to plan well ahead when launching new products. Once the new law is passed, it should only take one year to register a trademark, halving the waiting period for companies.

Andy also plans to speed up the IP courts. Non-criminal IP cases are handled by a specialist IP court, the Commercial Court. Typically, it takes judges around four months to hear and decide a case. Compared to a lot of countries, this is very fast. Still, that’s not fast enough for Andy. He plans to cut this by a month.

IP owners will be pleased to hear that the director general intends to increase all the criminal penalties for breaches of IP laws. The new penalties mean that the police will be able to detain an alleged counterfeiter for up to 60 days before trial.

This is good news for trademark owners. Currently, the police can shut down a factory or business that is running a pirating operation, but they cannot detain the owners. This makes it difficult for the police to complete their investigations, particularly to get the evidence they need.

This will change when the new law is passed. Two months is a long time to spend in a holding cell — long enough for police to gather evidence.

Apart from this, there is a long list of small but important changes that only a lawyer is likely to notice, which all improve the trademark registration process.

At the end of this month, Andy will start planning one of the more difficult steps in the process: how to explain the changes to businesses.

The director general recognizes that even small changes to the Trademark Law will affect business. To avoid the problems we saw with the Film Law, there will be further public consultation before the draft law is finalized and submitted to the House of Representatives for debate.

Andy will then repeat the exercise for the remaining IP laws. Hopefully the new laws will all be in force some time in the second half of 2010.

This overhaul of the IP laws is the latest in a number of recent promising developments in the IP world. After a slow start, the team set up by the president to tackle IP infringement has been quite active.

As well as a series of public outreach programs conducted by the team, Ansori Sinungan, who is responsible for coordinating the team, is planning to bring the police, public prosecutors, IP office and customs together in January to discuss how the four agencies can better coordinate.

A lack of coordination between agencies has been a major problem in the past.

The quality of court decisions is also steadily improving. The Commercial Court continues to handle an increasing number of complex IP cases, proving wrong the perception that Indonesian judges do not understand IP.

In particular, the Commercial Court has relaxed its strict rules to make it easier for trademark owners to take action against trademark pirates and counterfeiters.

Judges are also proving that they are not soft on counterfeiters. Gone are the days when they got off with a small fine. More and more counterfeiters are spending time behind bars, with six months in jail the going rate. Judges are not scared to lock up businessmen as well.

If this momentum keeps up, Indonesia could soon shake off its reputation as the Wild West of the IP world.

Brett McGuire is a consultant for Rouse. His Web site is HAKItree.com/brettmcguire.

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