You are using an outdated browser and your browsing experience will not be optimal. Please update to the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Install Microsoft Edge

February 29, 2016

Taking Action Against Trademark Infringement in Indonesia

Subscribe to Updates
Informed Counsel

Indonesia uses a “first-to-file” system, under which trademark owners must register their trademarks before they are able to take action against infringers for trademark infringement. The earlier your trademarks are registered and the wider their scope of protection, the better chance you have to exercise your rights and protect your intellectual property (IP).

As a trademark owner facing infringement of your IP rights in Indonesia, there are a number of important considerations to be aware of, and you have various means of recourse available to you.

Due Diligence

Before taking legal action against infringers for trademark infringement, you should conduct due diligence on your own IP rights to ensure that infringers are unable to make a counterclaim or revoke registrations of your IP.

To conduct due diligence on your own IP rights, you should ensure that the following factors have been adequately addressed:

  • Ensure that your IP rights are valid
  • Verify the ownership over your IP rights
  • Investigate the actual use of your IP in the market and secure all relevant documents
  • Review local compliance requirements (e.g., all agreements in Indonesia must be accompanied by a translation into Bahasa Indonesia; otherwise, the agreement may be unenforceable)
  • Determine whether there are any third-party rights attached to your IP (e.g., licenses or franchises)
  • Ascertain whether there are any existing or upcoming rules or legislation that could impair your IP rights (e.g., unfair competition law, consumer protection law, etc.) 
  • Seek the advice of local counsel to conduct your IP due diligence   

Preliminary Measures

In practice, it is often preferable to reach a settlement with an infringer instead of pursuing a legal action, which can be both costly and time-consuming. Settlements generally involve the destruction of the counterfeit goods, an undertaking, and the issuance of a public apology by the infringer.

To successfully reach a settlement with an infringer, you should conduct an investigation to obtain as much information as possible about the infringer and its use of the infringed trademark(s). The investigation can be conducted through investigators at the Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP), but you may consider using private investigators to ensure that the results of the investigation are reported quickly and kept confidential. If the infringed products relate to food or drugs, you should also conduct a search at the Badan Pengawas Obat dan Makanan, the Indonesian national agency of drug and food control.

Based on the information obtained from the investigation, a warning letter should be drafted and sent to the infringer, stipulating that the infringer should cease the infringing activities. The letter should be written in the Indonesian language, as English is not widely spoken in Indonesia. After the warning letter is sent, it is common to send follow-up letters and hold negotiations with the infringer.

Legal Actions Against Infringers

Criminal prosecution.  If you want to pursue a criminal action against an infringer, you must file a formal complaint either with the police or the Directorate General of the DGIP. After the complaint is received, investigators at the DGIP are authorized in the same way as police to conduct an investigation into IP infringement.

Typically, an investigation will lead to a raid. However, due to a backlog of complaints and an inadequate number of investigators, it can take several months before an actual raid takes place.

Civil enforcement.  Trademark owners or licensees of a registered trademark can file a civil lawsuit in the Commercial Court against trademark infringers in the form of a claim of compensation and/or a demand to cease all acts related to the unauthorized use of a registered trademark. Licensees, however, must appropriately record their license agreement at the DGIP.

The Commercial Court may order the infringer to surrender the infringing goods and/or order the infringing goods to be valued. This will only happen after the decision of the Court becomes final and legally binding. The decision of the Commercial Court can be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Border measures.  Although Indonesia’s Customs Law does not provide customs recordation or temporary suspension orders/injunctions of suspected IP rights infringement for imported or exported goods, recourse may be available under the Supreme Court Rules 2012 on Injunctions and Provisional Measures. Under these rules, you, as the IP owner, may request a warrant from the Commercial Court to temporarily suspend the release of suspected infringing goods. 

The period of suspension is ten working days, extendable for another ten working days if an additional warrant is obtained from the Commercial Court. During this time, you must notify the customs official of any legal action taken in order to maintain your rights—otherwise, the customs official may terminate the suspension of goods.

Despite these rules, in practice, it is a challenge to exercise these procedures. Often, there is an insufficient amount of information and supporting evidence on the consigned goods, making it difficult to determine whether the goods are counterfeit products. 

Conclusion

There are a variety of options available to IP owners to take action against infringers. But there are always risks involved. You should therefore conduct thorough due diligence on your IP rights before proceeding with legal action against an infringer.

Download Full Article
Related Professionals

Practices

Intellectual Property

Location

RELATED INSIGHTS​ 

August 20, 2026
As part of its membership in Lex Mundi, Tilleke & Gibbins has released the latest edition of its Guide to Doing Business in Thailand, providing an overview of the legal, regulatory, and commercial considerations for companies establishing or expanding operations in Thailand. The 2026 edition offers practical insight into the country’s business environment, investment framework, and operational requirements. The guide covers a wide range of topics relevant to foreign and domestic investors, including: Investment incentives and promotion schemes Financial facilities and banking regulations Exchange controls and money transfers Import and export regulations Business structures and incorporation options Requirements for establishing a business Operational and compliance considerations Business cessation and insolvency procedures Employment and labor laws Taxation Immigration and visa requirements Prepared by Tilleke & Gibbins lawyers across multiple practice areas, the publication outlines key aspects of doing business in Thailand, including foreign investment restrictions, regulatory compliance obligations, corporate structures, employment requirements, and recent legal and economic developments affecting investors. The publication forms part of Lex Mundi’s Country Guides series, a global collection of jurisdiction-specific reference materials prepared by member firms around the world. Together, these guides help companies evaluate opportunities, compare regulatory environments, and plan international business activities across multiple markets. The full Guide to Doing Business in Thailand 2026 is available through the button below.
Read More
August 13, 2026
Modern agricultural machinery is no longer purely mechanical but instead technology dependent. Modern tractors, harvesters, and other farm equipment increasingly incorporate embedded software, electronic control units, sensors, and digital diagnostic systems. While such technologies enhance efficiency, productivity, and precision farming, they also affect the manner of equipment repair and maintenance. As a result, farmers and independent repair providers may have little practical choice but to rely on authorized dealers, even for routine maintenance and repairs. Section 36 of Thailand’s Patent Act reflects the principle that the authorized sale of a patented invention usually exhausts the exclusive right of the patent owner over the specific product. This means that upon legal sale of the patented product, it can typically be used or resold without further authorization from the patent holder. This principle is relatively straightforward when applied to traditional mechanical equipment. Ownership of a machine ordinarily carries with it the practical ability to diagnose faults, replace worn parts, and restore the equipment to working order. Modern agricultural machinery, however, increasingly depends on embedded software, proprietary diagnostic systems, firmware updates, and other digital resources that may remain under the control of the manufacturer or patent holder. This tension lies within the “right to repair” debate. In the United States, on July 8, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission and five states announced a settlement with Deere & Company resolving allegations that Deere had unlawfully restricted farmers’ and independent repair providers’ ability to repair their equipment. Under the terms of the settlement, for the next ten years, Deere must provide repair resources, including software capabilities, on terms equivalent to those provided to authorized dealers. The Deere settlement highlights that the nature of ownership is changing, but legal concepts have not kept pace. Traditional patent-law concepts, including patent exhaustion, were developed with physical products
Read More
August 10, 2026
Thailand has finalized its social media KYC (“know your customer”) rules under Notification of the Electronic Transactions Commission on Measures to Prevent Technological Crimes for Social Media Service Providers (No. 2), which was published in the Government Gazette on May 5, 2026, and will take effect on November 1, 2026. While an early draft of the notification proposed requiring social media platforms to arrange identification of every user account, the final notification is significantly more targeted, focusing on paid online advertising and advertiser identity verification. Though the regulatory initiative primarily aims to combat online fraud and technology-related crimes, it also has important consequences for intellectual property enforcement, because the verified platform records that will be generated under the new requirements can help IP rights holders to identify anonymous online infringers. Key Regulatory Mandates The notification requires social media service providers to verify the identity of advertisers before their paid advertisements are published and disseminated in Thailand through social media, regardless of whether the advertising fees come from the advertisers or third parties. Verification of an advertiser is valid for one year, after which verification would have to be performed again before the platform could publish additional paid advertisements from the advertiser. Permitted verification methods are specified under the notification. A platform may verify an advertiser by checking identity evidence and confirming the connection between the advertiser and that identity evidence, with the notification giving facial comparison against certain government-issued identity documents as an example. Alternatively, platforms may verify advertisers through a digital identity verification and authentication system with an identity-proofing assurance level not lower than the level prescribed by Thailand’s Electronic Transactions Commission. The notification further requires platforms to retain only the advertiser’s information necessary to identify the advertiser, beginning from the start of the advertising activity and for
Read More
August 6, 2026
Introduction: A Trademark Paradox in Sustainable Packaging Walk into any Thai supermarket, and the label-free water bottle is no longer a novelty. Thailand’s packaging market, valued at approximately USD 15.68 billion in 2025, is shifting toward minimalist, plastic-light designs as ESG pressures reshape how brands present their products. The country generated roughly 5.68 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, with a recycling rate of only 19 percent, and regulators are now considering rules that would allow label-free bottled water relying on embossing, laser printing, or QR codes instead of wrap-around labels. As packaging itself becomes the brand identifier, a paradox emerges: designs built to say the least often struggle hardest for protection under Thai intellectual property law. The Trademark Barrier: When Shape Is Not Enough Section 7, paragraph 2(10) of the Thai Trademark Act deems a shape distinctive only if it is not the natural form of the goods, is not necessary to achieve a technical result, and does not add value to the goods. The Department of Intellectual Property’s 2022 examination guidelines apply this test conservatively, as the following examples illustrate. A plain water bottle relying on subtle contours to signal its brand is typically read as just another bottle, not a source identifier. Acquired distinctiveness offers a theoretical escape route, but it demands extensive evidence of sales, advertising, and consumer recognition—an especially heavy burden for new entrants whose minimalist packaging has not yet achieved market prominence. The result is a structural bias against precisely the design innovation that sustainability goals are meant to encourage. Design Patents: A Partial, Imperfect Substitute Design patent protection, covering a product’s shape, configuration, or ornamentation, appears to offer an alternative route. In practice, it is constrained by the same forces driving the minimalist trend. Because many brands converge on similar solutions—clear
Read More