As caseloads at the Commercial Court increase and resources are stretched, the legislature will need to introduce deterrents against vexatious litigation in order to maintain acceptable standards of service.
It is not unusual to see vexatious claims heard in the Commercial Court. In PT. Tiga Reksa Perdana Indonesia v. PT. Indoasia Thrivetama and Djohan Kohar (32/Desain Industri/2013/PN.Niaga Jkt. Pst.), the Plaintiff did not produce any convincing evidence to support its claim for cancellation of the defendants’ registered design. Further, in their Defence, the Defendants’ described the complicated history of the dispute between the parties, including that the Plaintiff had referred to the design cancellation Claim in order to suspend a pending criminal action (police raid). If the Plaintiff did file its Claim for the sole purpose of disrupting the criminal action, it did not receive any appreciable sanction for wasting the Commercial Court’s time.
Civil procedure rules provide no real disincentive against filing vexatious litigation in Indonesia, as there is no costs regime (see our post on costs in IP litigation here). It is no wonder then that we see vexatious claims filed by litigants where it is in their commercial interests to do so (e.g. to disrupt a raid, or where estimated profit over the six month period it could take to hear first-instance proceedings will exceed the costs of proceedings). Civil procedure reforms could curb this trend and improve the effectiveness of the judiciary.