As part of the most extensive legislative amendments in the history of the United Arab Emirates, the Ministry of Economy (MoE) shared updates on Industrial Property and Patents.
As of 2021, the following sectors accounted for the majority of patent applications: machinery and construction (23 percent), chemical engineering (24 percent), pharmaceuticals and biotechnology (24 percent), electricity and metals (7 percent), and information and communication technology (9 percent).
In line with its success in developing an integrated system for intellectual property applications and services, the UAE was ranked first in the Arab world by the Global Innovation Index 2021 for the sixth consecutive year. In this regard, the country has enacted supportive and stimulating policies to enhance the impact of intellectual property in general and industrial property and patents in particular since they are among the primary drivers of economic recovery and progress.
The new industrial property law is one of the important initiatives developed by the Ministry of Economy and its partners to promote growth based on knowledge and innovation and support entrepreneurship.
In terms of the fundamental changes to the new law in order to facilitate and stimulate innovation and intellectual property in the country, it ensures the complete protection of industrial property rights through the addition of industrial property rights that were not covered by the previous legislation, as well as the adoption of four new procedures for the management and examination of applications and for facilitating and expediting the procedures for receiving, examining, registering, and granting them.
New provisions include:
- In an expedited application, a formal and substantive examination of the submitted application can be completed quickly to receive a patent.
- Patent applications can be converted into requests for utility certificates and vice versa. This step plays a crucial role in increasing the number of patents and utility certificates granted in the country. It also increases the utility certificates’ value as a good tool for protecting simple inventions and innovations that are tangible, so it can be used as a flexible step in the process of obtaining a complete patent.
- Patent applications, utility certificates, and industrial designs may be divided into several applications to protect the invention at different stages of its development.
- The retrieval of applications allows the possibility of restoring a patent application or an industrial model before or after it has been granted.
Furthermore, the new legislation updates procedures for resolving disputes regarding industrial property applications, making them more flexible and faster by allowing re-examinations of the following grant and creating a mechanism by which grievances may be submitted to the Ministry before resorting to the courts.
The Ministry of Economy provides integrated services regarding various industrial property applications according to international standards through its website.