From magic charms to symbols of wealth: well-known trade marks in Indonesia

Different from articles that focus in particular on the protection of foreign well-known trade marks in Indonesia, this chapter will also examine famous local brands in their socio-economic context. The role of trade marks according to intellectual property textbooks is to signify the origin of goods or services, the quality of the product, to advertise it and to provide consumers with information about the product. We can detect some significant differences in these roles, however, if we examine trade marks in the context of young post-colonial nation states. Such differences have much to do with the nature of the local economy, with the role of foreign corporations and the attempt to strengthen and build up domestic enterprises. In the immediate post-colonial period, this leads to a tension between the continuing trading interests of the departing colonial power and new nationalist governments. In countries with peaceful decolonisation processes, these tensions are to some extent dissolved via foreign investment laws into arrangements where local companies are allowed to share in the continuing domestic operation of a former colonial trading company. However, in those countries were decolonisation occurred after an armed struggle, foreign trading interests and intellectual property often were simply nationalised and taken over by local companies, operated privately or by branches of the national government.