Basem AlMaghthawi

We, during the past few years, have worked mainly on the area of trademarks and tradenames. This was due to the high demand of trademarks’ and tradenames’ protection in the Saudi and international market.

I personally worked on one of the initiative trademarks cases in Saudi. The case was filed to the Board of Grievances by an International Indonesian company (“the company”) against a Saudi establishment and the Saudi Ministry of Commerce. The latter accepted a registration of a famous trademark which is registered in more than 300 countries worldwide and rejected the objection of the company. For the Saudi establishment, which was a commercial agent for the company several years before the case, the main issue was that the owner (agent), during the period of agency, claimed that he tried to register the trademark several times with no luck. After the end of the agency contract, he registered the trademark under his name. The Ministry’s decision has been revoked and the registration cancelled based on the right of priority and bad faith. Paris Convention and the GCC Trademark Law were considered in this case by the Court.

IP is a growing area in Saudi. Therefore, several conferences are held to raise the awareness of the importance of IP. From the legal angle, all connected authorities, such as the Saudi Ministry of Commerce and the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property, are boosting their policies for better protection. They also arrange conferences to assure the effectiveness of their policies.