Recently, the Government of the Republic of Indonesia is set to increase the official fees for patent, trade mark, industrial design and copyright matters carried out by the Directorate General of Intellectual Property of Indonesia. The draft fees which were only announced on 15 August 2017 are expected to be in force before the end of 2017. At the time of writing, the official date of which is yet to be officially announced by the Government.
There are several amendments that we would like to highlight as the new laws will significantly affect the applicants and their respective applications.
To begin with, there have been additional laws in the Indonesian Copyright Law – which are the operational license request for collective management body for the authors and/or related rights for music and song; and operational license request for collective management body for arts other than music and songs. Besides these, official fees for filing recordals of copyright assignment, recordals of license agreement or copyright and/or related rights requesting an excerpt of a copyright recordation and amendment of application/recordation data will be increased as well.
With regards to the Industrial Design Law, applicant is now allowed to request postponement for publication of the industrial design application and file an appeal for the rejection of an industrial design application – please note that there will be separate fees for an application which was filed as a set design and as a partial design. Under the new regulation also, there will be increased in the official fees for requesting an excerpt of an industrial design registration certificate, recordal of assignment, recordal of industrial design license agreement, recordal of name and/or address change and data amendment.
With regards to the Patent Law, the Patent Prosecution Highway (Japan-Indonesia Pilot Program) has been implemented as a part of their new regulation. This is a great news for patent application in Indonesia however, there will be a penalty for late annuity payment via grace-period mechanism which is also include in their new addition in Indonesia patent law.
In the new regulation in Patent Law, the official fees will be increased for request for substantive examination, additional claims after the first 10 claims, additional pages after 30 pages, extension of time (EoT) to submit formality documents, expediting publication, data amendment, EoT to submit a response to a substantive examination result, voluntary claim reduction; patent search, requesting for an excerpt of registered patent/simple patent, requesting for an excerpt of recordals of patent/simple patent license agreement and recordals of assignment and basic maintenance fee and claim for annuity payment.
With regards to the Trademark Law in Indonesia, the official fees will be increased for requesting an excerpt of recordals of trademark license agreement, recordal of assignment and recordal of license agreement and late renewal within the grace period of 6 months.
In view of the impending increase in the official fees, we strongly recommend all of our clients to file their IP applications in Indonesia as soon as possible to enable them to enjoy the current lower official fees. We are pleased to inform you that despite the significant increase in the official fees, our professional fees will remain unchanged, until further notice.