Click here for Asia IP's Indonesia IP Experts 2021

Foreign investment money is flowing into Indonesia, and there is no end in sight.

The Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board – also known by its Indonesian acronym, BKPM – says that despite the outbreak of Covid-19, investment in the country increased to Rp210.7 trillion (US$14.4 billion) in the first quarter of 2020. That’s equivalent to an 8.0 percent increase over the same period in 2019, the BKPM happily points out.

Singapore is pouring the most money into Indonesia, accounting for US$2.7 billion of the first quarter FDI total, followed by China (US$1.3 billion, after ranking first in the fourth quarter of 2019), Hong Kong (US$1.1 billion), Japan (US$600 million) and Malaysia (US$500 million). The BKPM says that transportation, warehousing and telecommunications leads the way for FDI, followed by categories including equipment; utilities; housing, industrial estates and office buildings; and food crops, plantations and livestock.

Lawyers at Herbert Smith Freehills and Indonesian firm Hiswara Bunjamin & Tandjung, writing in a blog on the HSF Notes website, note that the country’s legislature opened a number of sectors to foreign investment on March 4, 2021.

“The New Investment List on its face significantly reduced the number of sectors that are wholly closed to any form of investment (foreign or local) and those that are either totally closed or partially open to foreign equity investment,” the firm said. “This is in line with Indonesian government efforts to encourage more foreign direct investment in Indonesia to create jobs and counteract the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The firm notes that sectors including telecommunications, media and technology (TMT) are included in the liberalization.

Growing investment in Indonesia will naturally lead to an increased interest in – and scrutiny of – the country’s intellectual property regime and practice. With this in mind, we turned to IP professionals in the region in order to understand better what clients need today. Asia IP asked a large number of professionals – mostly in-house counsel and corporate legal managers – what they were looking for from their legal service providers. From their answers, we have compiled our list of 50 Indonesia IP Experts, those lawyers who understand just what their clients need and are able to provide them with the best practical advice.

Today’s clients are looking for more than just a degree from a top-notch university and a couple of decades of practice. In order to be an outstanding provider of intellectual property advice, a lawyer must also be capable of understanding how intellectual property impacts the rest of his client’s business, and be able to provide practical, real-world, business-savvy advice. She must be able to provide sound advice on the current law, but also needs to be able to understand coming trends which are likely to impact her client’s business.

Unlike days past when she might have played just a bit role, today’s IP Expert is every bit a full-fledged team member.

There’s no group of dominant practices dominating our list in Indonesia, demonstrating the breadth and relative strength of the top tiers of law firms in the country. Rouse, which works in Indonesia in association with Suryomurcito & Co., placed six different lawyers on the list, but no other firm had more than three lawyers listed (AMR Partnership, Assegaf Hamzah & Partners, Biro Oktroi Roosseno and SKC Law).

An astonishing 28 different firms employ members of our list of 50 lawyers, many of them placing two each (Am Badar & Partners, HHP Law Firm, Inter Patent Office, Januar Jahja & Partners, K&K Advocates, Lubis Santosa & Maramis, Makarim & Taira S, Pacific Patent Multibglobal and Tilleke & Gibbins).

Most of the lawyers named to our list have multiple practice specialties. Many of them are litigators, while others concentrate on prosecution work or provide strategic advice.

All of them have something in common: they are experts in their fields and, in one way or another, they provide extra value for their clients. They are Asia IP’s Indonesia’s IP Experts.

Click here for Asia IP's Indonesia IP Experts 2021

Indonesia’s IP Experts is based solely on independent editorial research conducted by Asia IP. As part of this project, we turned to thousands of in-house counsel in Indonesia, Asia and elsewhere and around the world, as well as Indonesia-focused partners at international law firms, and asked them to nominate private-practice lawyers including foreign legal consultants, advisers and counsel.

The final list reflects the nominations received combined with the input of editorial team at Asia IP, which has more than 40 years of collective experience in researching and understanding Indonesia’s legal market.

All private practice intellectual property lawyers in Indonesia were eligible for inclusion in the nominations process; there were no fees or any other requirements for inclusion in the process.

The names of our 50 IP Experts are published here. Each IP Expert was given the opportunity to include their biography and contact details in print and on our website, for which a fee was charged.