“To register or not to register, that is the question.”
 
Any discussion of the registration of intellectual property in Indonesia ultimately has to acknowledge that the issue is not of great importance to many Indonesians. According to the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kamar Dagang dan Industry Indonesia), as of 2014, only 30% of Indonesian products had been registered as intellectual property. Unfortunately, this means that many Indonesian products are left unprotected as we enter the free-market and increasingly borderless era of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).[1]
 
A general perception persists however that the long, drawn-out process involved in registering intellectual property is, at the end of the day, not worth the effort. Not only is the process of registering intellectual property serpentine and lengthy, but it also involves a number of overhead costs at the registration phase, as well as various post-registration maintenance expenses. Moreover, it is also common knowledge that the enforcement of such rights is not particularly effective in Indonesia. This results in a situation which is ultimately unfavorable to many stakeholders here, especially businesses which are not in possession of large reserves of funds to burn through, such as those operating at the micro- to medium-scale levels which currently dominate the Indonesian economy. There are also many parties who are simply unaware of what intellectual property rights are, let alone the procedures involved in registering them.[2]
 
With low registration rates being the norm here, the government is continually attempting to find ways of improving the infrastructure and facilities necessary for the protection of intellectual property rights. Although a number of long-term discourses aimed at revising the existing legal framework on intellectual property rights are currently being pursued, several more immediate measures have also been taken.[3] One of these is the issuance of Minister of Law and Human Rights (“Minister”) Regulation No. 4 of 2016 on Intellectual Property Incentives (“4/2016 Ministerial Regulation”).[4] This regulation offers a financial facility to certain parties intending to register intellectual property rights.[5] In line with this, the Creative Economy Agency (Badan Ekonomi Kreatif) also recently launched a mobile application that provides comprehensive information relating to intellectual property rights.[6]