Avoid Trademark Claims, Two Professors Explain The Importance Of Registering At DJKI

JAKARTA - Director General of Intellectual Property (DJKI) of the Ministry of Law, Razilu said, the function of DKJKI is to protect those who have applied for intellectual property.

From the registered intellectual products or assets, said Razilu, the state will then provide its protection if it gets a report of plagiarism actions that harm intellectual property owners.

"Those who have applied for intellectual property have been protected and need to be dealt with by anyone who falsifies. That is the function of the DJKI," he said after destroying the impurity confiscated evidence, recently.

Of the several intellectual assets that must be registered and protected by DJKI, one of them is the brand.

Professor of the Faculty of Law, University of North Sumatra, Prof. Dr. Ok. Saidin, SH, M.Hum explained, Brands are graphical signs that can be displayed in the form of images, logos, names, words, letters, numbers, color arrangement, in the form of 2 (two) dimensions and/or 3 (three) dimensions, sounds, holograms, or combinations of 2 (two) or more of these elements to distinguish goods and/or services produced by people or legal entities in goods and/or services trading activities.

"Merek is an important component in a business because it becomes an identification point. In addition, brands are also a promotional tool as well as product quality guarantee for a company. In Indonesia, the protection of brands is regulated in Law No. 20 of 2016 concerning Geographical Brands and Indications (UU MIG), where the terms of trademark registration are regulated in Article 21," explained Ok Saidin.

Brands need to be registered with DJKI. Brand registration has many benefits, such as being evidence for owners who are entitled to registered brands; the basis for rejection of the same brand as the whole or the same, basically those requested for registration by others for similar goods/services; and the basis for preventing others from wearing the same brand as the whole or the same basically in the circulation for goods/services like.

Even so, Professor of the Faculty of Law, Gadjah Mada University, Prof. M. Hawin, SH., LL.M., Ph.D. added, there are also brands whose registrations can be rejected by DJKI. One of them is because the registered brand has bad faith.

Because for example the brand registration has bad faith. Then the brand is basically the same as other brands. For example, kaso. Kaso is a registered brand, but there are, for example, KasoMax. It clearly has something in common with the kaso brand. Now it must be rejected for registration, "explained Hawin.

He added, broadly speaking, brand registration serves to protect brands and prevent companies from suffering financial and reputational losses.

However, it cannot guarantee that brands can be free from counterfeiting, imitation, doming or ownership claims from other parties. Because in fact, there are often the same trademark disputes or similar between the two parties.

One of the cases is the KASO vs KasoMAX trademark dispute. If you look at the dispute, the case of KASO vs KasoMAX is interesting to study. Starting from the beginning of the registration of the brand to DJKI, entering the realm of the commercial court, it was decided by the Supreme Court, to the criminal realm.