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BBoreal Trade

Service

Registration Ownership Structuring

This is the mistake that costs the most and gets spotted the latest. In several Southeast Asian markets your product registration has to be held by a local company, and the obvious candidate is your distributor. If it is in their name and the relationship ends, you may not be able to take it with you. You lose the market, not just the partner, and you start again at the back of the queue.

What’s included

  • Who is legally allowed to hold the registration in each market you are targeting, with the rule that says so
  • A recommended holding structure for your situation: your own entity, an agent, or the distributor with contractual protections
  • The specific clauses your distribution agreement needs on registration ownership, transfer and termination
  • Review of any agreement you have already signed, and what it currently commits you to
  • Where transfer is possible, the process and what it requires from the outgoing holder

What you actually receive

A worked example, free to download and nothing to fill in first. The company in it is invented and says so on its own cover. The costs and requirements are real ones for real markets, so what you see is what this service produces for a product of your own.

  • PDF · 4 pages · illustrative

    Who holds your market access across three markets

    The holder question answered for the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand: who is legally allowed to hold each permission and the instrument that says so, why a Philippine registration cannot outlive a licence you have never read, what changed in Indonesia in January 2026, and the six clauses a distribution agreement needs before signature. Written as a brief for your counsel, not as advice.

    Download the sample

Commercial terms

Fee range
Scoped per engagement
Typical timeline
Confirmed at scoping

Questions

Our distributor says they have to hold the registration. Is that true?
Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is a negotiating position. The requirement is a matter of the destination market’s law and it differs between the six markets we cover. We check what the law in your market actually requires for your product, and tell you which of the two you are dealing with.
We have already registered in the distributor’s name. Is it recoverable?
Sometimes, and it depends on the market and on what your agreement says. Some registrations can be transferred with the current holder’s cooperation; some cannot be transferred at all and have to be refiled. The first step is establishing which situation you are in, which is usually a short piece of work.
Why not just register in our own name everywhere?
Where it is permitted, that is usually the right answer. Where it is not, insisting on it stalls the market entry entirely. The useful question is not who holds the certificate but who controls it, and in markets where you cannot hold it there are generally contractual and structural routes to keeping that control.
Is this a legal service?
No. We are not a law firm and we do not give legal advice. We set out how registration holding works in these markets, what it means commercially, and what your agreement needs to address, and we work alongside your counsel, who should review the drafting.

Read before you brief us

The reasoning behind this work, written out in full and free to read. You will brief us better for having read it, and you may decide you do not need us for part of it.

Some of this is already published

This page describes work we would do for you. Part of the answer is written already, read off the regulator and dated, and it costs nothing to check it before you decide whether you need us.