Service
Registration Ownership Structuring
This is the mistake that costs the most and gets spotted the latest. In several ASEAN 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
- Confirmation of who is legally permitted to hold the registration in each target market, cited to the source
- 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
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 confirm the actual position for your market and product against the primary source, 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.
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Markets this covers
Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia