A DJKI trademark rejection is an official decision by Indonesia’s Directorate General of Intellectual Property refusing to register a mark, issued after substantive examination and separate from a third-party opposition. Getting that letter feels final. It is not. Indonesian law gives you a specific window to fight back, but that window closes fast, and the process only works if you understand exactly what you are appealing and why.
Key Takeaways
- A rejection and an opposition are different DJKI processes with different appeal routes. Confusing the two wastes your limited response window.
- The formal appeal, called banding, goes to the Komisi Banding Merek (Trademark Appeal Commission) first, not directly to the Commercial Court.
- Sources disagree on the exact filing deadline (three months versus 90 working days from the rejection letter), so check the date printed on your own letter rather than relying on a general rule.
- Letters of consent are not formally recognized under Indonesian trademark law, but they can still help as supporting evidence in some cases.
What Is the Difference Between a DJKI Rejection and a Trademark Opposition?
A DJKI rejection and a trademark opposition are not the same event, and mixing them up is the fastest way to miss your real deadline. A rejection is a decision made by a DJKI examiner during substantive examination, based on the mark itself, without any third party involved. An opposition, by contrast, is a challenge filed by another party during the two-month public opposition window that follows publication, and it only happens if someone actively contests your mark.
If your application never made it to publication, or if it was published and no one objected, then any refusal you received came from the examiner directly. That refusal follows Pasal 20 and Pasal 21 of Law No. 20 of 2016 on Marks and Geographical Indications (UU Merek), and it is what most people mean when they say a trademark was “rejected.” If instead a competitor or a squatter filed a formal objection during publication and DJKI sided with them, you are dealing with an opposition outcome, which has its own separate appeal path covered in the article on trademark squatting and opposition in Indonesia. The rest of this guide focuses on the examiner-issued rejection, since that is the more common scenario and the one with the least clear public information.
Why Do Trademark Applications Get Rejected in Indonesia?
DJKI rejections in Indonesia fall into three categories: absolute grounds, relative grounds, and formal deficiencies. Knowing which one applies to you determines what your appeal needs to argue, since a weak argument on the wrong ground almost guarantees a second rejection.
Absolute Grounds Under Pasal 20
Absolute grounds have nothing to do with any other registered mark. Under Pasal 20 of UU Merek, DJKI refuses marks that conflict with state ideology, existing legislation, public morality, religion, or public order. This category also covers marks that are purely generic or descriptive of the goods or services they cover, meaning they cannot distinguish one business from another. A word like “Warung” for a food stall business, used alone, falls squarely into this trap, and no amount of evidence about your business will fix a mark that the law considers incapable of functioning as a trademark in the first place.
Relative Grounds Under Pasal 21
Relative grounds exist because of another party’s rights. Pasal 21 requires DJKI to reject a mark that has an overall or essential similarity to a trademark already registered, or already filed earlier, for the same or a related class of goods or services. This is by far the most common rejection reason, and it also covers marks that resemble a well-known person’s name, a state institution’s logo, or a geographical indication without proper authorization. The different types of trademarks recognized in Indonesia matter here too, since distinctiveness is judged against the specific category your mark falls into.
Formal Deficiencies
Formal rejections are administrative rather than substantive. If your application is missing a required document, an incorrect Power of Attorney, or an incomplete goods and services list, DJKI issues a Notice of Formality Deficiency rather than a substantive refusal. You typically get two months to fix the gap. Miss that window and the application is deemed withdrawn, which is a different and often more painful outcome than a substantive rejection, since there is no appeal for a withdrawal. It simply stops existing.
Notes from InvestinAsia Consultants
A pattern we see often: a client assumes a rejection under Pasal 21 means their brand name is simply unavailable, full stop. In practice the examiner is usually comparing your mark against one specific cited mark in one specific class. Sometimes the fix is not a legal argument at all. It is refiling a modified version of the mark, or narrowing your goods and services list so the overlap disappears.
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How Do You Appeal a DJKI Trademark Rejection?
Appealing a DJKI trademark rejection means filing banding, a formal appeal to the Komisi Banding Merek (Trademark Appeal Commission), not a direct lawsuit at the Commercial Court. This is a point worth being precise about, because it is easy to find summaries that skip straight to “Pengadilan Niaga” and leave out the administrative step that comes first. The Commission is an independent body under the Ministry of Law made up of senior examiners and outside trademark experts, and it exists specifically to review the examiner’s decision before anyone sets foot in court.
Under Law No. 20 of 2016, banding becomes available only after you receive a Surat Pemberitahuan Penolakan Tetap, a final notice of rejection, typically issued after you have already had one chance to respond to a preliminary refusal. On the deadline itself, published sources are not fully consistent. Some describe a three-month window from the date of the rejection notice, while a more recent guide puts it at 90 working days from the date the notice was sent, which is close to but not identical to three calendar months. Rather than pick one figure and risk being wrong for your specific case, treat the date printed on your own rejection letter as the authority, and confirm it with a registered IP consultant before you build a filing timeline around it.
The appeal itself is filed through DJKI’s online system at merek.dgip.go.id, under the “Pasca Permohonan” menu, and requires a formal appeal letter, your supporting arguments (the Memori Banding), proof of payment for the government fee, and a Power of Attorney if a consultant is filing on your behalf. Government reporting on Peraturan Pemerintah No. 90 of 2019, which governs the Commission’s procedure, states that a decision is due within a maximum of three months from the date the application is received, with the Commission required to notify you of the result within 30 days of reaching it. If the Commission grants your appeal, DJKI issues the certificate. If it rejects the appeal in full, your remaining option is a lawsuit at the Commercial Court (Pengadilan Niaga), and that route has its own filing window measured from the date you receive the Commission’s decision, not from your original rejection.
What Evidence Should Go Into Your Trademark Appeal?
Your Memori Banding, the written argument that anchors the appeal, needs to do more than restate that you disagree with DJKI’s decision. For a relative-grounds rejection, it should include a side-by-side comparison against the cited mark covering visual appearance, pronunciation, and overall meaning, since Indonesian examiners weigh all three when judging similarity. Evidence of prior commercial use, market reputation, or existing registrations in other classes can strengthen your position, particularly if you can show your mark has built independent recognition. Where a prior Commission or Commercial Court decision addressed a genuinely comparable fact pattern, citing it adds weight, though this is an area where a registered consultant’s familiarity with recent decisions matters more than a general web search would suggest.
For an absolute-grounds rejection built on a claim that your mark is merely descriptive, the stronger argument usually shows that the mark, taken as a whole or in combination with other elements, has acquired distinctiveness rather than arguing the individual words in isolation. A generic term paired with a genuinely fanciful element can sometimes clear this bar even when the generic term alone could not.
Can a Different Class Strategy Save Part of Your Application?
Class strategy becomes relevant when your rejection only applies to some of the goods or services you originally listed, or when the conflicting mark only covers part of your intended market. Indonesia follows the Nice Classification system across 45 classes, and protection is strictly class-specific, meaning a registration in one class carries no rights in an unrelated one. If the cited mark that triggered your rejection sits in Class 25 for clothing but your business also needs Class 35 for retail services, narrowing your original application, or filing a fresh one limited to the unaffected classes, can sometimes secure partial protection faster than fighting the whole rejection through appeal.
This approach will not help if the rejection is absolute rather than relative, since a mark judged generic or contrary to public order fails regardless of the class it sits in. It also will not help if the overlap runs across every class your business genuinely needs. But for a rejection triggered by one narrow conflict in one class, filing a parallel, more targeted application while your appeal proceeds gives you a second path to protection instead of betting everything on the Commission’s decision.
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Do Letters of Consent Work to Overcome a Trademark Rejection?
Letters of consent and coexistence agreements are worth understanding honestly, because their treatment in Indonesia differs from what applicants coming from the US, EU, or Singapore often expect. In those jurisdictions, a signed consent from the owner of the cited mark can be enough on its own to clear a similarity objection. Indonesian trademark law does not currently regulate delimitation agreements or letters of consent as a formal path to registration, and DJKI examiners are not required to accept one as decisive proof against a Pasal 21 refusal.
That does not make a consent letter worthless. In practice, it can still be submitted as supplementary evidence alongside your Memori Banding, supporting an argument that the mark owner does not view coexistence as a source of consumer confusion. It carries the most weight when combined with genuine differences in goods, market, or presentation, and the least weight when the two marks are close to identical in the same class. If your rejection stems from a mark owned by an affiliated company, a business partner, or a licensor willing to cooperate, negotiating that consent is still worth pursuing. Just go in understanding that the final decision rests with the examiner or the Commission, not with the agreement itself.
Notes from InvestinAsia Consultants
Clients sometimes ask why they cannot simply get the other trademark owner’s written blessing and move on. We tell them the same thing every time: bring the consent letter, but do not build your entire appeal strategy around it. We have seen strong comparative and use-based arguments succeed where a consent letter alone would not have been enough on its own.
When Should You Hire a Trademark Attorney?
Foreign applicants cannot file directly with DJKI at any stage, appeal included, since Indonesian law requires filings by foreign individuals and companies to go through a registered Indonesian IP consultant holding a Power of Attorney. For Indonesian applicants, hiring an attorney is not legally required but becomes a practical necessity once a rejection is involved. Building a comparative similarity argument, gathering usage evidence in the right format, and citing relevant Commission or Commercial Court precedent is a different skill from filing a clean first application. A registered consultant also knows the Commission’s current processing patterns and can flag early whether your specific facts justify an appeal or whether a refiling under a modified mark or narrower class list is the faster, cheaper route.
Getting this decision wrong is not a small mistake. Operating without a registered trademark also removes the criminal-law protection covered in the article on sanctions for IP infringement in Indonesia, and every month spent on the wrong strategy is a month a competitor or squatter could use to strengthen their own position in your intended class.
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References
1. Republik Indonesia. (2016). *Undang-Undang Nomor 20 Tahun 2016 tentang Merek dan Indikasi Geografis*. Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan JDIH Database. Retrieved from
https://peraturan.bpk.go.id/Details/37595/uu-no-20-tahun-2016
2. Republik Indonesia. (2019). *Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 90 Tahun 2019 tentang Tata Cara Permohonan, Pemeriksaan, dan Penyelesaian Banding pada Komisi Banding Merek*. Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan JDIH Database. Retrieved from
https://peraturan.bpk.go.id/Home/Details/129234/pp-no-90-tahun-2019
