Your Listings Are Evidence. The Question Is Whose.

A seller in Shenzhen, Seoul or Ho Chi Minh City lists on an Indonesian marketplace. Orders arrive, parcels ship, reviews accumulate. By any commercial measure the business is trading in Indonesia. On the trademark register it does not exist.

That gap — real commercial presence, no registered right — is where almost every cross-border brand dispute in this market begins.

The regulatory layer moved this year

Electronic commerce in Indonesia sits under Government Regulation No. 80 of 2019 on Trading Through Electronic Systems, with ministerial regulation below it. That ministerial layer changed recently and the change is easy to miss.

Minister of Trade Regulation No. 19 of 2026 on the Conduct of Trading Business Through Electronic Systems was enacted on 4 June 2026 and took effect on 8 June 2026. It revokes Minister of Trade Regulation No. 31 of 2023, which had governed licensing, advertising, guidance and supervision for electronic commerce. The 2026 regulation covers business models for platform operators, the requirements for conducting electronic trading, electronic advertising, preference for domestic products, representative offices for foreign trading companies in the electronic commerce field, the use of artificial intelligence, supervision, and administrative sanctions.

Any compliance memorandum on an Indonesian marketplace presence written before June 2026 is now citing a revoked instrument.

Takedown is a platform process, not a statutory remedy

This distinction is worth stating plainly, because confusing the two produces unrealistic expectations and wasted months.

When a proprietor reports an infringing listing to a marketplace, the mechanism that removes it is the platform’s own intellectual property policy. The platform decides, on its own criteria and its own timetable, usually on documentary proof of a registration. It is fast and it is cheap, and it is not an adjudication of anything. The listing can return under a new seller account the same week.

The statutory remedies sit elsewhere. Infringement actions under Law No. 20 of 2016 go to the Commercial Court. Cancellation of a registration obtained in bad faith goes there too, under Article 76 read with Article 21(3), subject to no limitation period by force of Article 77(2). Those are slower, and they are the only mechanisms that settle who owns the mark.

Why first-to-file bites hardest here

Indonesia grants rights to the first applicant, and it does not recognise prior use abroad as a basis for ownership. A cross-border seller with ten thousand Indonesian orders and no Indonesian registration holds commercial traction and no registered right.

The party that notices this is frequently the seller’s own local partner, a competing seller in the same category, or a professional filer who watches marketplace listings for unprotected marks. Once that application matures, the original seller is the one receiving takedown notices on its own brand.

The remedy exists. Bad faith cancellation under Article 76 with Article 21(3) is available without any time limit, and visible trading history makes bad faith easier to demonstrate, not harder. But it is litigation, and it is being conducted from a position the seller could have avoided for the cost of a filing.

The asset most sellers never think about

Here is the compensating advantage, and it is substantial.

A marketplace transaction history is close to an ideal record of use in trade. It carries dates, quantities, buyer locations and counterparties. It was generated by a system the seller does not control, for commercial purposes unconnected with any dispute. It cannot be backdated by the party relying on it.

In a non-use proceeding under Article 74 — where the question is whether the mark was used in trade in the goods as registered, now across a five-year window following Constitutional Court Decision No. 144/PUU-XXI/2023 — that record answers the statutory question directly. It is worth more than any volume of advertising material, because advertising shows reach and this shows trade.

One caution, and it is the reason this paragraph exists: platforms purge historical data. A seller who first thinks about this when the claim arrives may find that the years it needs are gone. Export the history annually and keep it with the registration file.

A sequence that works

• File before you list. An application costs a fraction of a cancellation action, and the filing date is the only thing that cannot be recovered later.
• File for what you actually sell. Classes and specifications should match the listings. Use in goods outside the specification does not maintain the registration.
• Search the register for your own mark and near variants before expanding, including in the names of local partners and logistics agents.
• Export transaction histories every year and keep packaging images as the artwork changes.
• Use takedown for speed, the Commercial Court for finality — and decide early which of the two the matter actually requires.
• Check the current regulation before relying on any compliance advice about platform obligations. That layer has moved twice in three years.

Our position

A cross-border seller that genuinely trades into Indonesia is exactly the kind of proprietor the use requirement is designed to protect. Its marketplace record is real trade, documented by a third party, in the goods it actually sells.

What defeats that seller is not the law. It is the sequence: trading first and registering later, in a jurisdiction where the register decides. The fix is unglamorous and it is cheap, and it has to happen before the orders start rather than after the dispute does.

Primary sources

• Minister of Trade Regulation No. 19 of 2026 on the Conduct of Trading Business Through Electronic Systems, enacted 4 June 2026 and effective 8 June 2026, revoking Minister of Trade Regulation No. 31 of 2023 (accessed 5 October 2026)
• Government Regulation No. 80 of 2019 on Trading Through Electronic Systems (accessed 5 October 2026)
• Law No. 20 of 2016 on Trademarks and Geographical Indications — Articles 1(1), 21(3), 74, 76, 77, 83 (accessed 5 October 2026)
• Constitutional Court Decision No. 144/PUU-XXI/2023, pronounced 30 July 2024