Finding and checking suppliers
Protecting a design or brand.
Intellectual property is territorial. A trademark registered in your own country gives you nothing in Indonesia, and Indonesia operates a first to file system for trademarks. Registration where the goods are made is a separate step from registration where they are sold.
What can be registered.
Indonesia's intellectual property office handles trademarks, industrial designs, patents, copyright and geographical indications, and the register is publicly searchable.
- Trademark
- Your brand name and logo. First to file, which means whoever registers first generally holds it, including somebody who is not you.
- Industrial design
- The appearance of a product. Relevant for furniture, homeware and packaging, and it has to be new when filed.
- Copyright
- Arises without registration and can be recorded. Covers artistic works, which includes a good deal of craft pattern and artwork.
- Patent
- For a technical invention. Rarely the relevant instrument for the goods on this site.
- Geographical indication
- Protects an origin name rather than a company. This is what protects Muntok, Gayo and Toraja, and it is not available to a buyer.
What actually protects you.
Registering your trademark in Indonesia if you are having goods made under it. Without it, your own supplier or a third party can register the name and you become the infringer in the country where your goods are produced.
Registering the industrial design before it is shown to anybody, because novelty is a requirement and showing it around can destroy it.
Splitting the work. No single supplier holds every component of a design, which is a practical protection that costs nothing.
Choosing the counterparty carefully. Enforcement is slow everywhere, so the realistic protection is that a supplier with a real business and real customers has more to lose than to gain.
What an NDA does.
It sets expectations and it makes the conversation explicit, which has value. It is also a contract that has to be enforced somewhere, against a small business, in a foreign jurisdiction, at a cost that exceeds the order.
Sign one anyway for anything you actually care about, keep it short and translated, and understand that it is a deterrent rather than a remedy.
The bigger practical protection is sequencing. Do not send the complete technical package to five factories to get quotes. Send what a quotation needs and send the rest to the one you chose.
Questions buyers ask.
My trademark is registered at home. Is that enough?
Not in Indonesia. Rights are territorial and Indonesia operates first to file, so a registration elsewhere does not stop somebody registering your name there. If your goods are made under your brand in Indonesia, register there too.
Can I check whether a name is already taken?
The intellectual property office maintains a public register, and a search before you commit to a name is cheap. Do it before printing anything.
A factory copied my design. What now?
What you can do depends entirely on whether you registered anything and where. That is why the useful moment for this question was before production rather than after, and it is worth an hour with a lawyer early.
Read next.
Private label and OEM
Your brand on their product, or a product developed for you. Two different deals with two different risks.
What an export contract should say
Twelve clauses that decide what happens when something goes wrong, and the three buyers leave out and regret.
How to verify an Indonesian supplier
Two public government registries, the cross-check between them that catches most problems before a deposit moves, and the part only a visit can answer.
Negotiating without breaking the order
Six moves and four traps, about business mechanics rather than national character. What to fix before you discuss price.
When to change supplier
Switching costs more than buyers expect. Which problems to fix and which to move on from.
Sourcing from Indonesia?
Tell us the product, the quantity and the destination. We come back with what it involves before anyone talks about money.
Sources
- 1Register of protected geographical indications. Direktorat Jenderal Kekayaan Intelektual, Republic of Indonesia. Checked 5 August 2026.