The Commercial Compliance & Consumer Protection (CCCP) Sector in Dubai Economy has seen a growing number of international brands being enlisted on its ‘IP Gateway,’ the digital platform created to protect intellectual property (IP) rights as well as trademarks and commercial agencies.
The portal, which supports the strategic focus of Dubai Economy on positioning the emirate as a competitive hub and smart city enabling sustainable business development, had 69 active commercial agency files 5,225 active trademark files by the end of 2020, an increase of 38% and 1% respectively over the previous year.
An increasingly diverse portfolio of global brands and commercial agencies are seeking to benefit from the protection offered by the portal, said Ibrahim Behzad, Director of the Intellectual Property Rights Department in CCCP.
“US trademarks had the largest share (31%) of active files on the portal at the end of 2020, followed by Emirati (13%), French (7%), German (6.4%), and British brands (5.8%). However, Denmark accounted for the highest increase of 42% in trademark files followed by British Virgin Islands (29%), while the number of French files rose 16% to reach 370, and British files went up by 14% to reach 205,” said Behzad.
The importance of IP Gateway as a smart channel for IP rights owners and their representatives to stay connected with Dubai Economy was reinforced by COVID-19. Overall, Dubai Economy received 292 complaints relating to IP infringements and 27 related to the rights of commercial agencies in 2020, and all of them came through the IP Gateway. Complaints in the two categories were 298 and 35 respectively in 2019.
Behzad remarked:
“Swiss trademarks accounted for the largest number of IP infringement complaints (61), followed by US (54), Emirati (48), German (33), and French (31) trademarks. Product-wise, clothing accounted for the largest share (39) complaints, jewellery as well as phones and accessories had a share of 33 each, 29 were about watches, and 24 were related to perfumes.
Trademarks and IP owners as well as commercial agencies can open files and submit their complaints relating to infringements in Dubai on the IP Gateway app available on the Apple, Google and Huawei stores. All IP transactions are completed smartly through the IP Gateway without the need for customers to visit Dubai Economy, and services are available in five languages: Arabic, English, Japanese, French, and Italian.
