The House of Representatives of Indonesia Passed the New Patent Law; Local Inventors to Receive Royalties and Subsidized Annuity Fees

The House of Representatives passed the new Patent Law during the general assembly at the House of Representatives in Jakarta on July 28, 2016. The new Patent Law is hoped to ensure the national technology development as well as providing both local and international inventors with more certainty of law. The new Patent Law is consistent with the Government’s goal to increase output based research in encouraging inventors and researches to obtain Patent protections for their inventions.

The Ministry of Law and Human Rights of Indonesia also aims to increase the welfare of the People of the Republic of Indonesia through the utilization of Patents, more specifically Patents related to health care, environment, defense, and most importantly genetical resources (GR). The new Patent Law is hoped to stimulate the number of local Patent applications filed in order to improve the economy of Indonesia, as well as to increase the general welfare of the local inventors.

To increase the number of local Patent filings in Indonesia, the new Patent Law will subsidize the annuity fees for the first 5 years for universities and other education institutions. The inventors of governmental bodies will also be awarded with royalties proportionate to their inventions. The Ministry of Finance issued a regulation last year pertaining the share of royalty to be paid to the inventors, which currently stands at 40% for the inventors and 60% for the institutions (both private and Government).

A full study of the recently passed Patent Law will be published soon.

Source: Directorate General of Intellectual Property of Indonesia, July 2016