On Tuesday, 14 January 2020, The Minister of Law and Human Rights, Mr Yasonna H. Laoly, held a meeting with the European Union Ambassador for Indonesia, Mr Vincent Piket, and sixteen EU member states in Kuningan, South Jakarta. The meeting discussed regarding the Indonesia-EU Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IEU-CEPA) which has been negotiated since 2016.
Indonesia has added and submitted 21 geographical indication products to the European Union in early 2020. Yasonna hopes that Indonesia can add more geographical indications to facilitate and create new market access and increase trade between Indonesia and the European Union.
They also discussed regarding the Intellectual Property update. At present, the government is trying to establish an omnibus law to simplify regulations by revising and combining several laws at once. One of the regulations that will be changed in the omnibus law is Law No. 13 of Year 2016 regarding patents. The Minister has aligned the new Ministerial Regulation regarding patents with the applicable World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations and provisions.
"There are several concerns and objections to the implementation of Article 20 of Law no. 13/2016, which requires patent holders to make products in Indonesia with obligations for technology transfer and employment. To overcome this problem and while waiting to amend this law through our Parliament, I have issued Ministerial Regulation No. 15/2018 regarding the postponement of Article 20", said the Minister.
This regulation was previously considered burdensome because it was considered to violate the provisions of Article 27 of the TRIPS Agreement that had been ratified by the Government through Law No. 7 the Year 1994 regarding the Ratification of the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization.
The article was also considered burdensome for patent holders to produce goods that already have a patent or use the process of patents that have been registered in Indonesia, where if not fulfilled then the patent will be revoked. However, these obligations apparently cannot be carried out easily due to limitations in the mastery of technology, Human Resources, and so on.
(Source: http://www.dgip.go.id) By: Patent Team, Biro Oktroi Roosseno Indonesia