Exploring patent information from the ASEAN region

Focus Indonesia

With the number of patent filings in the region nearly doubling over the last decade, the ASEAN region has become increasingly important for both applicants and patent information searchers. What's more, several ASEAN member states have made comprehensive changes to their national IP systems.

This series turns the spotlight on major ASEAN jurisdictions. We not only look at recent changes to patent law, but also highlight key features of the granting procedure in each country. We hope this will help you better understand the data you receive from these jurisdictions.

In this edition, we start with Indonesia.

National IP law and membership of international IP treaties

With a population of more than 270 million, Indonesia is the largest market in South-east Asia and the seventh largest economy worldwide in terms of GDP. Its patent system has a rather short history: the first modern patent law entered into force in 1991 and was subsequently amended several times, most recently in November 2020. Indonesia has joined all major international IP protection treaties and organisations: amongst other things, it accepts foreign priority rights under the Paris Convention and can be designated in international applications under the PCT system.

Patents and simple patents

As with most ASEAN countries, Indonesia offers both patents and utility models (or "simple patents"). While both types of IP right are subject to substantive examination, simple patents do not have to meet the same requirements for inventiveness as patents. They do, however, need to show at least an "improvement to existing products". The term for patents is twenty years from filing date, and for simple patents ten years. Indonesia does not provide any kind of term extension.

The number of patent applications almost doubled from around 4 500 in 2009 to around 8 800 in 2021. With about 85% of all applications filed by foreigners, the volume of first-time applications for new technologies is comparatively low. For this reason, patent information users may be less interested in prior-art searches and more interested in freedom to operate assessments and in monitoring pending applications from competitors.

Simple patents have seen even stronger growth – from just 300 in 2011 to 3 200 applications in 2021. Unlike with patents, almost all simple patents are filed by domestic applicants. While these volumes are small (taking into account Indonesia's large population), your searches should include simple patents, especially if recent growth continues.

Grant procedure – main steps and time limits

Accessing Indonesian publications

You can view new Indonesian publications in the patent gazette available on the website of Indonesia's Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP). Here you can find bibliographic data, abstracts (in Indonesian) and representative drawings (but not full specifications with claims and descriptions). It is published weekly, with separate issues for patents, simple patents and divisional filings.

The gazette contains application announcements. It does not include publications of granted rights. You can access data on granted Indonesian rights using the basic search tool available to the public on the DGIP website.

Fig. 1: Indonesian patent gazette webpage – select the gazette issue download button on the right.   
 

Fig. 2: example of an Indonesian application announcement in the patent gazette 

Indonesian publication number formats

As the example in Fig. 3 shows, application and publication numbers have different formats.

Fig. 3: Application number (INID Code 21) and publication number (INID Code 11) formats 

Number formats are as follows:

Application number: t00yyyynnnnn

• t = type of right (P = "patent", S = "simple patent”, W = PCT national phase entries in Indonesia)
• two zeros
• y = year
• n = serial number

Announcement number: yyyy/nnnnn (patents) and yyyy/S/nnnnn (simple patents)

• y = year
• S = "simple patent" – no additional letter for patents
• n = serial number

Grant number: IDt(0000)nnnnn

(not available in the gazette, only in the DGIP search tool): 

• ID = "Indonesia"
• t = type of right (P = "patent", S = "simple patent”)
• n = serial number (with up to four initial zeros)

We hope you now have a better understanding of Indonesia's patent system and how to retrieve basic information.

Keywords: Indonesia, ASEAN, patent gazette, number format