IP offices of ASEAN member states and the EU-ASEAN Project on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights (ECAP III Phase II) have developed a regional trademark search tool that can be accessed online (see here).
As the ASEAN Economic Community ("AEC") approaches, business is considering how to protect and commercialise intellectual property on a regional level. Access to information is a significant hurdle in prosecuting intellectual property rights, and ASEAN TMview aims to ease the pain by making trademark data freely available on one convenient platform. The database claims to include 2,269,674 records, for all ASEAN member countries save for Vietnam and Myanmar.
Although ASEAN TMview claims to facilitate access to information about trademark applications and registrations in participating ASEAN Countries - including Indonesia - it appears that it may not be a comprehensive resource. The Indonesian data, at least, is subject to significant limitations that are not immediately apparent when browsing the ASEAN TMview website. Following a review of a selection of trademark records, it would appear that that ASEAN TMview's Indonesia database draws from the Indonesian Trademark Office's online database - which includes only registered trademarks (no applications) and is not kept updated (there are a significant number of missing records). For this reason, neither ASEAN TMview nor the Indonesian Trademark Office's online database should be used for clearance searching.
ASEAN TMview and the Indonesian Trademark Office's online database are useful for preliminary searching, and it is great to see progress in facilitating access to registers. As the databases are developed, we may eventually see full online access to a database that accurately reflects the General Register of Trademarks. And that will make everyone in the IP community very happy.
