INSIGHTS

UAE enacted major legal reforms on 27.11.2021 targeting different laws among which industrial Property Law, Copyrights Law and Trademarks Laws.

The new reforms are summarized as follows:

Copyright and neighboring rights

This legislation has been reinforced to provide better protection to people working within the creative fields. The new law  enhances the benefit for people of determination their participation in creative sectors. The new law authorizes to copy, distribute, and make available published works in ways that guarantee access to blind and people of determination who have vision challenges, with the aim of enabling them to read those works and publications, without the need to obtain the consent of the right holder, publisher or author, while setting the necessary standards and controls.

In addition,  the new law creates a grievance committee to look into appeals against the decisions of the Ministry of Economy related to copyright, and before submitting them to the court, with the aim of accelerating litigation procedures within a short period, and protecting the author from any infringement of his rights.

Trademarks

The amendments on the trademarks Law offer protection of non-conventional trademarks namely 3D trademarks, holograms, sound trademarks such as musical tones distinguishing a brand or a company, and olfactory (smell) trademarks, such as a distinctive odor/smell for a product or a company.

In addition, geographical names can now be included in trademarks when a product is strongly associated with a place. Such measure is a step to market iconic products for UAE such as Dates.

Under the new reforms, local individuals and companies are no more requested to provide copy of the trade license as a condition to apply for trademark registration.

Commercial Register

UAE commercial register is not linked between the different emirates neither with the Federal authority “Ministry of economy”. Hence, investors apply for company registration before the registry of the emirate/authority in which the business will operate. However, under the new reforms, a unified commercial register under the management of the Ministry of Economy will be created and the same shall be linked to all emirates/authorities registries.

The establishment of the new economic registry and registration in it will not entail any additional procedures for the investors, as the companies will continue to register their data in the local commercial registry as currently applied, but it will activate the process of linking between the Ministry of Economy and the local authorities, to be automatically registered in the economic registry. The law also directed the ministry and the competent authority to complete the procedures for simultaneous linking between the commercial registry and the economic registry, which ensures the automation of data exchange between the two registries, and its immediate updating.

For further information in respect of the above, please contact Baianat-IP UAE office at dubai@baianat-ip.com