What the Consumer Protection Bill Means for Brand Owners, and Why Enforcement Still Runs Through the Trademark Law
Komisi VI of the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR) is preparing a bill to replace Law No. 8 of 1999 on Consumer Protection. It has governed business-to-consumer dealings for 27 years. The chair of the working committee drafting the replacement says more than half the law changes. The draft widens the definition of a consumer, tightens the rules on standard-form agreements and standard clauses, strengthens administrative and civil sanctions, and creates a new institution for consumer disputes. For businesses that depend on brand protection in Indonesia, that combination repays a careful read. It repays it as a compliance exercise. On the evidence so far it does not change where enforcement work against counterfeiters actually gets done.
The bill is not law, and no commencement date is set. This blog explains where it stands, what it would change, how it meets IP enforcement work in Indonesia, and what rights holders should do now. The bill is worth tracking because it regulates the rights holder. The route to act against counterfeiters is a separate question, and the answer there has not changed.
Where the Bill Stands
The DPR confirmed the bill in the Program Legislasi Nasional (Prolegnas) Prioritas for 2026, approved in plenary on 20 May 2026. That list runs to 68 bills. Drafting sits with the commission’s working committee, which has taken evidence from law faculties, industry associations and the Ministry of Trade.
Progress beyond that stage has been slower. On 12 May 2026 the DPR named four bills for continued Tier I discussion, among them the industrial designs bill. This one was not on the list. A commission member set out the remaining route in November 2025 – draft, Legislation Body, Tier I discussion, plenary. That discussion has not opened.
What the Bill Would Change
Four changes matter to businesses selling into the Indonesian market. Each is taken from the draft as reported rather than from enacted text, and each remains open to amendment.
| Area | Law 8/1999 today | The bill as drafted |
| Who is a consumer | An individual using goods or services for personal, family or household benefit, not for resale | Extends to legal entities as end consumers. The point is contested – the working committee chair has warned that treating resellers as consumers turns the relationship into a business-to-business one |
| Standard clauses | Article 18 prohibits eight clause types and two contract forms | An explicit prohibited list – waiver of the consumer’s right to sue, unilateral amendment or interpretation, non-refundable terms, exclusion of liability for consumer loss, and disclosure of protected consumer data – with the Badan Perlindungan Konsumen Nasional (BPKN) issuing contract-standardisation guidelines and supervising how they are applied |
| Dispute forum | Badan Penyelesaian Sengketa Konsumen (BPSK) | Lembaga Alternatif Penyelesaian Sengketa Konsumen (LAPSK) – mediation and arbitration, decisions within 30 to 60 days of registration, transition completed within two years of enactment |
| Government supervision | Market surveillance under sectoral regulation | Express powers to prohibit trading in goods or the supply of services, impose administrative sanctions, order withdrawal from circulation, and order offers, promotion and advertising to stop |
Two Routes to the Same Counterfeit
SKC Law’s Enforcement & Intelligence Team has run operations that began as online monitoring and grew into coordinated raids, including one that recovered more than 75,000 counterfeit goods. A counterfeit infringes a trademark. It is almost always also a product that fails to match the quality, condition or origin its own label claims – a description that belongs to consumer law.
Article 8 of Law 8/1999 is the operative provision. Its ten prohibitions cover goods that fail required standards, goods that do not match their label, and goods that do not match what advertising promised. Before the Constitutional Court in May 2026, the DPR called Article 8 the heart of consumer protection in Indonesia. Breach is not only a civil exposure. Article 62(1) attaches up to five years, or a fine of up to IDR 2 billion, to Article 8 and to the standard-clause rules in Article 18. Note where that exposure points. Article 8 and Article 18 describe what a business actor must not do, so the provision carrying the heaviest consumer penalty is the one most likely to be read against a brand owner’s own terms and advertising.
Compare the trademark route. Article 102 of Law No. 20 of 2016 on Marks and Geographical Indications covers the trader. Someone who knows or should suspect the goods come from a trademark offence faces up to one year, or IDR 200 million. Article 103 makes it a complaint offence, so nothing moves without the rights holder. That is usually read as a limitation. It is better read as control, because the rights holder decides what is filed, against whom, and when. The consumer ceiling for goods that misdescribe themselves is higher, at five years and IDR 2 billion. Whether prosecutors reach for it in practice is a separate question, and the public record does not answer it. A ceiling that is heavier on paper and untested in the reported record is not a foundation to build an enforcement programme on.
Standing is the harder limit. The consumer mechanisms in this field run on consumer complaints. BPKN receives them, the dispute body hears them, and the Ministry of Trade processes them, and in each case the person with the grievance is the buyer. A brand owner whose mark has been copied is not that buyer. Even on the widened definition in the draft the consumer is an end consumer, and the working committee chair has warned against treating resellers as consumers at all. Under the Trademark Law the rights holder is the complainant by design.
Compliance exposure runs the other way. Standard terms, warranty conditions, refund policies, storefront terms and promotional claims all sit inside Articles 8 and 18. Importantly, if the consumer definition widens to legal entities, distribution and licensing agreements come into scope too. The pattern is consistent. Consumer law reaches the brand owner well before it reaches the counterfeiter.
Consumer Complaints in Indonesia: Volume and Recovery
The Badan Perlindungan Konsumen Nasional (BPKN) logged 12,196 consumer complaints between January 2017 and 15 September 2026. Financial services, housing, electronic-system trading, and tourism and creative-economy services account for 82.5% of them. In its year-end review for 2025, BPKN recorded 851 complaints, with potential consumer loss assessed at IDR 438.3 billion and recovered value at around IDR 23 billion. That is around 5% of the loss assessed. So far in 2026, to 15 September, BPKN has received 420 complaints and closed 268 of them. It names hidden costs and transaction designs that steer consumer decisions among the patterns it tracks in electronic and social commerce.
The Ministry of Trade reports a higher closure rate on complaints it handles directly. Its Directorate General of Consumer Protection and Orderly Trade received 1,568 complaints in the first half of 2026, resolved 89% of them, and recorded a consumer transaction value of IDR 18.6 billion. Electronics, motor vehicles, payment systems and transport services led the reports. In electronics and motor vehicles, the recurring themes were goods that did not match what was promised, goods that arrived damaged, and warranty claims refused at service centres. Those are product-conformity complaints. In practice they describe the territory anti counterfeiting indonesia programmes already work in. The scale is worth holding next to the channel it polices. Both bodies log complaints in the thousands and account for transaction values in the tens to hundreds of billions of rupiah, against an e-commerce channel measured in hundreds of trillions.
Marketplace Liability Is Already Before the Court
The most immediate development is not in the bill. Mahkamah Konstitusi (MK), the Constitutional Court, has spent 2026 hearing a challenge to Article 8 brought by five law students. They argue that the provision addresses conventional sellers and leaves consumers in electronic transactions without certainty. Loss often arises where a platform has not validated what a listing says.
Their petition asks the Court to read Article 8 as binding marketplace operators absolutely, as facilitators of the transaction, with joint and several liability for goods that do not conform. Platforms would also have to keep seller identity and transaction data available so consumers can recover. BPKN, the Yayasan Lembaga Konsumen Indonesia (YLKI) and the Indonesian E-Commerce Association (idEA) were heard as related parties on 8 June 2026. The final hearing in Case No. 123/PUU-XXIV/2026 took place on 7 July 2026, with written conclusions due on 15 July. A decision is pending.
The channel at stake is large. Bank Indonesia recorded IDR 487.01 trillion in national e-commerce transactions during 2024, around 7.3% above the previous year. If platform obligations are read into Article 8, they attach under consumer law, independently of the Trademark Law. That would matter, and it would matter to consumers first. The remedy the petition asks for is a consumer’s remedy against a platform, not a rights holder’s remedy against a seller. The indirect value to brand owners would sit in the data-retention limb, where an obligation to keep seller identity available could make the seller behind a listing easier to identify. The action against that seller would still be a trademark action.
Practical Implications for Rights Holders
None of this is settled. Exposure under the current law does not wait, and neither does the counterfeit trade. The two tracks call for different responses. Consumer law is a compliance obligation to manage. The Trademark Law is the route to act on.
Keep enforcement on the trademark track. Investigations, warning letters, coordinated enforcement and customs recordal are available under the law as it stands today, and each one starts when the rights holder decides it starts.
Pull your Indonesian standard terms. Review distribution agreements, warranty conditions, refund policies and storefront terms against the Article 18 prohibitions as they stand.
Check what your advertising promises. Article 8 already reaches labelling, advertising and sales promotion, and the bill adds an express power to halt promotion.
Document an internal complaint route. The bill would require complaint handling on stated criteria and procedures. A recorded channel keeps disputes out of a formal forum.
Treat counterfeiting as a two-statute problem. Where a counterfeit also misdescribes what it is, consumer law is a second track rather than a substitute for trademark infringement indonesia Coordinated action still reaches the source — see our case study on the seizure of over 34,000 counterfeit bearings in Jakarta. A consumer complaint resolves one transaction. An enforcement action reaches the stock.
Track the pending decision. A finding on platform liability would change notice and takedown practice for every rights holder selling online here. Read it alongside the new mechanism for reporting online IP infringement. Until it lands, takedown work continues on the mechanisms that already exist.
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This content is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice on specific matters, contact enquiries@skclaw.id.
