Insights Business Setup
Trademark Registration in the UAE: What Founders Need to Know
How trademark registration works in the UAE: Ministry of Economy process, classes, cost, renewal, and the accounting and corporate tax angle founders miss.
Key takeaways
- A UAE trademark is registered with the Ministry of Economy under Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021, which replaced the 1992 trademark law
- Registration protects a brand for ten years from the filing date and is renewable for successive ten-year periods
- The process runs from a clearance search through examination, publication and a 30-day opposition window to the final certificate
- The UAE follows the Nice Classification, and cover is granted by class — protecting a mark across several classes usually means several applications
- A registered trademark is an intangible asset with real accounting, corporate tax and VAT consequences beyond the filing itself
You spent months building a name. It went on the signage, the packaging, the invoices, the social accounts — and by the time the business turns over real money, that name is worth more than most of the equipment on the books. Then someone else registers it. Trademark registration is the step that stops that story ending badly, and in the UAE it is more straightforward than most founders assume. What is less obvious is what happens next: the brand becomes an asset the company owns, with accounting, corporate tax and VAT consequences that outlast the filing by years. This guide covers both halves — how registration works, and the financial side an accounting firm sees long after the certificate is framed on the wall.
The law behind a UAE trademark
Trademarks in the UAE are governed by Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 on Trademarks, which came into force at the start of 2022 and replaced the old Federal Law No. 37 of 1992. The current law modernised the regime considerably. It widened what can be protected — the definition now stretches beyond names and logos to non-traditional marks such as three-dimensional shapes, sounds, scents and holograms — and it tightened the procedures around examination, opposition and enforcement.
Registration is administered centrally by the Ministry of Economy (now operating as the Ministry of Economy and Tourism), through its online services portal. There is no separate emirate-by-emirate filing: one application covers the whole of the UAE, from Dubai to Fujairah. That single-window structure is one of the genuine advantages of registering here, and it is why the process is best thought of as a federal matter rather than a local one.
A trademark, in practical terms, is any distinctive sign that sets your goods or services apart from everyone else’s. Distinctiveness is the test that trips up the most applications. A made-up word or a stylised logo clears it easily; a plain description of what you sell does not. If the mark simply tells the customer what the product is, the Ministry is likely to refuse it, because you cannot fence off ordinary language that competitors need to use too. A trademark protects the name or logo, not the invention or technology behind the product — that side is what our patent registration in the UAE guide covers.
Who should register, and when
The honest answer is: earlier than most people do. A trade licence lets you operate, but it does nothing to stop a competitor adopting your name. The two are often confused, and the confusion is expensive — the businesses that come to grief are usually those that traded well for years, built real brand value, and only thought about protection once someone else had registered something close to their name.
It is worth being precise about the difference between a business name and a trademark, because founders ask us to trademark a business name when what they have actually done is reserve a trade name. The trade name is the entity’s name on the licence, approved by DET or the free zone authority, and it stops another company registering the identical name in the same register. That is administrative, not proprietary.
A trademark registered with the Ministry of Economy is a property right in the mark itself — the word, the logo, or both — enforceable against anyone using something confusingly similar on the goods or services you have claimed. So the question “should I trademark my business name?” turns on whether the name is doing commercial work. If customers ask for you by name, the answer is usually yes. Brand registration in the UAE and trade name reservation are two different filings with two different authorities, and having one does not give you the other.
For a new company, the sensible moment to consider a trademark is around the same time you are settling the trade name and the licence — which is exactly when founders are already thinking about structure, ownership and the shape of the business. Our business setup advisory work often surfaces this: the brand decisions taken at formation are the ones worth protecting, and it is far cheaper to secure a name at the outset than to fight over it later. If you are still at the planning stage, our guide to business setup in Dubai sets out where the licensing decisions sit, and trademark protection slots naturally alongside them.
That said, registration is never compulsory. It is a commercial judgement. If your name is generic and interchangeable, the case is weak. If your brand is becoming the reason customers choose you, the case is strong, and the value of registering rises with every month the brand grows.
How registration works, step by step
The process has a clear shape, and knowing it removes most of the anxiety around it.
It starts with a clearance search. Before filing, you check the register for identical or confusingly similar marks already protected in the same class of goods or services. This is the single most valuable step and the one applicants most often skip. A UAE trademark search runs against the Ministry of Economy’s own register, and because registration is federal, a search covers the whole country at once — there is no separate Dubai register to check and no separate Sharjah one. That also answers a question we get constantly: trademark registration in Dubai, trade mark registration in Sharjah and a filing made from Abu Dhabi are the same federal application, producing the same nationwide right. A search that flags a conflict early saves you the government fees, the wait, and the disappointment of a refusal months down the line.
Next comes the application itself, filed with the Ministry of Economy through its portal. You submit the mark, identify the goods or services it will cover, and provide the applicant’s details. Where an agent files on your behalf, a legalised power of attorney is generally required, and the Ministry sets the deadlines for submitting supporting documents — timelines that have been adjusted by administrative decision more than once, so it is worth checking the current requirement rather than assuming.
The Ministry then carries out examination. Article 12(3) gives it a 90-day time limit to decide on the application from the date of submission, provided the conditions in the Decree-Law and the executive regulation are met. Article 12(1) lets it impose restrictions or amendments to prevent confusion with an earlier mark, and Article 12(2) is the sentence to diarise: if the applicant does not reply within 30 days of being notified of those restrictions, the applicant is deemed to have waived the application. Silence is abandonment, not a pause.
If it passes, the mark is published in the Ministry’s Bulletin at the registration applicant’s expense under Article 15(1), and the announcement itself must state the deadline for filing an objection.
Publication opens the opposition window. Article 15(2) gives any interested party 30 days from the date of publication to file an objection with the Ministry. Article 16 adds a point that catches applicants out: a grievance or appeal against a decision rejecting an objection does not suspend the registration procedure unless the competent court orders suspension.
If no one opposes, or an opposition is resolved in your favour, the mark proceeds to registration and the certificate is issued. Article 17(1) fixes when protection actually begins: the legal effect of registration commences on the date the application was submitted, not the date the certificate is printed.
10 years
How long a registered UAE trademark is protected, measured from the filing date — and it is renewable for successive ten-year periods indefinitely
Every statutory deadline in the UAE trademark process
| Step | Deadline | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Claim Paris Convention priority from an earlier foreign filing | Copy of the earlier application and its details within 6 months of the UAE application date, else the priority claim is extinguished | FDL 36/2021, Art 11 |
| Reply to Ministry-imposed restrictions or amendments | 30 days from notification, else the application is deemed waived | FDL 36/2021, Art 12(2) |
| Ministry decision on the application | 90 days from submission | FDL 36/2021, Art 12(3) |
| Third-party opposition after publication | 30 days from publication | FDL 36/2021, Art 15(2) |
| Protection period | 10 years from the date the application was submitted | FDL 36/2021, Art 21(1) |
| Renewal window | Within the last year of the current protection period, and for 6 months after it | Cabinet Resolution 57/2022, Art 11(1) |
| Effect of missing the renewal window | Mark deemed removed from the register as of the expiry date of the protection period | FDL 36/2021, Art 22(2) |
| Ownership becomes indisputable | 5 years of uninterrupted registration and use without legal proceedings, unless bad faith is proved | FDL 36/2021, Art 18(1) |
| Earlier user’s application to deregister | Within 5 years of the registration date | FDL 36/2021, Art 18(2) |
| Well-known mark owner’s application to deregister a similar registered mark | Within 5 years of the registration date, unless bad faith is proved | FDL 36/2021, Art 24(2) |
| Deregistration for non-use | 5 consecutive years of non-use, absent emergency circumstances | FDL 36/2021, Art 24(3) |
| Re-registration by a third party after removal | Only after 3 years from deregistration, unless a court judgment sets a shorter period | FDL 36/2021, Art 27 |
| Temporary protection for a mark shown at a recognised UAE exhibition | Request at least one month before the exhibition opens | Cabinet Resolution 57/2022, Art 12(1) |
Sources: Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 on Trademarks and Cabinet Resolution No. 57 of 2022 (its executive regulations), as published on uaelegislation.gov.ae. Checked 5 August 2026.
Three of those rows do most of the damage in practice. The 30-day waiver in Article 12(2) turns an unanswered Ministry email into a dead application. The six-month tail in Article 11(1) of the executive regulation is the only cushion after a missed renewal, and Article 22(2) backdates the removal to the original expiry date rather than to the end of the grace period. And the five-year non-use ground in Article 24(3) means a defensive filing in classes you never trade in is not permanently safe — an interested party can move against it.
From filing to certificate, a clean application typically takes several months, and a contested one can run well beyond a year. That is not a reason to delay — Article 17(1) dates protection back to the filing date, so the sooner you are in the queue, the earlier your priority.
Classes: getting the coverage right
Trademarks are not protected in the abstract; they are protected for specific categories of goods and services. The UAE follows the international Nice Classification, which sorts everything into 45 classes — classes 1 to 34 for goods, and 35 to 45 for services. A restaurant, a clothing line and a software product each fall into different classes, and your protection only extends to the classes you register in.
This has a practical consequence for cost and strategy. The UAE has operated on a one-application-per-class basis, so protecting a single mark across several categories usually means several applications and several sets of official fees. A founder whose business spans, say, retail products and the online platform that sells them needs to think about which classes genuinely matter, rather than either under-protecting the brand or paying to blanket classes that will never be used. Register too narrowly and a competitor can legally use your name in an adjacent category; register too broadly and you spend money defending ground you do not occupy. Classification practice can change, so confirm the current rules with the Ministry before you file, and define your classes deliberately, aligned to where the business actually competes.
What the fees actually are — and why we are not printing a number
We are going to leave this blank on purpose, and it is worth explaining why.
Article 57 of Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 says only this: “The Cabinet shall issue a decision determining the fees necessary to implement the provisions of this Decree-Law.” The Decree-Law itself contains no fee schedule. Neither does Cabinet Resolution No. 57 of 2022, its executive regulation, which refers throughout to “the prescribed fees” without stating them — including in Article 11, the renewal provision.
So any AED figure for UAE trademark registration comes from a Cabinet decision on fees, from the Ministry of Economy and Tourism’s own published service card, or from a setup agent’s marketing page. Those are three very different sources, and only the first two are authoritative. We have not opened a current Cabinet fee decision, so we are not quoting a figure — go to the Ministry’s own service listing, or ask a registered trademark agent for a written quote, and confirm the number against the Ministry before you budget.
What we can tell you is what drives the number, because that is in the law and the classification practice:
What moves the cost of a UAE trademark filing
| Cost driver | Why it moves the number |
|---|---|
| Number of Nice classes | The UAE has operated on a one-application-per-class basis, so official fees multiply by class |
| Publication in the Ministry’s Bulletin | Article 15(1) puts the announcement expressly “at the expenses of the registration applicant” |
| Legalised power of attorney | Required where an agent files for you; legalisation is a separate cost outside the Ministry’s fees |
| Trademark agent’s professional charges | Commercial, not statutory — quoted per class and per stage |
| Opposition, if one is filed | Adds a contested procedure under Articles 15 and 16 with its own timeline |
| Renewal every 10 years | Article 21(1), with the renewal fee prescribed rather than stated in the law |
| Recordal of assignment, pledge or licence | Article 28(3) makes recordal a condition of effect against third parties, so it is not optional if the mark is transferred |
| Madrid Protocol international designation | WIPO fees plus each designated country’s fee, on top of the UAE filing |
Sources: Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021, Articles 15, 21, 28 and 57; Cabinet Resolution No. 57 of 2022. Checked 5 August 2026. This table lists what you will be charged for, not how much — the amounts sit in a Cabinet decision on fees that we have not sourced.
Protecting the mark beyond the UAE
A UAE registration protects you in the UAE and nowhere else. For a business that already sells across borders, or plans to, that gap matters. The UAE acceded to the Madrid Protocol, the WIPO-administered international system, which means you can seek protection in a large number of member countries through a single international application built on your UAE (or other home) registration, rather than filing separately in each market from scratch.
For an SME with regional or global ambitions, this is worth factoring in from the start. The order in which you file — home registration first, then the international designation — affects your priority dates and your costs, so if exporting is anywhere on the horizon, raise it before you file the domestic application, not after.
The part accountants care about: a trademark is an asset
Here is where our perspective differs from a law firm’s. Once the certificate is issued, the trademark stops being a legal project and becomes a line on the balance sheet — or at least, it should be considered for one.
Under IAS 38, the accounting standard for intangible assets, the value you build up in a brand you created yourself generally cannot be recognised as an asset. The internally generated goodwill in your own name is real, but it is too subjective to measure reliably, so the standard keeps it off the books. What can usually be capitalised are the direct costs of acquiring and registering the trademark — the official fees and the professional costs of securing it. A trademark bought from someone else is normally recognised at what you paid for it.
Because a trademark can be renewed indefinitely, it is frequently treated as having an indefinite useful life. That means it is not amortised down to zero over a set number of years; instead it stays on the balance sheet and is tested for impairment — reviewed to check its carrying value still holds up. Renewal fees, when they come around every decade, are their own accounting event. None of this is difficult, but it only happens if someone is actually looking at the brand as an asset rather than filing the certificate in a drawer. This is ordinary accounting and bookkeeping discipline applied to something founders rarely think of as an accounting matter at all.
A trademark is one of the few assets a company can own outright, renew forever, and license for income — yet most founders treat it as a legal receipt rather than the balance-sheet item it becomes the moment it is granted.
Trademarks and corporate tax
The corporate tax angle is where a valuable brand gets genuinely interesting — and where the traps sit.
If your company simply owns and uses its own trademark, the tax picture is quiet: the way the asset is carried and any impairment recognised in the accounts flows through into the corporate tax computation in the ordinary way. The complexity begins when the brand starts earning. The moment one company licenses its mark to another — a franchisee, an overseas affiliate, or a group sister company — it creates royalty income, and that income sits squarely inside the corporate tax net under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022.
Two rules deserve particular care. First, transfer pricing. Where the licensing is between related parties, the royalty has to be set at arm’s length — a real, market-rate charge, documented — not an informal intra-group understanding. If your structure involves a holding company owning the brand and operating companies paying to use it, that arrangement needs pricing and support, which is the heart of our transfer pricing work.
Second, the Free Zone regime, where a common assumption quietly goes wrong.
This is exactly the kind of assumption our corporate tax services exist to catch before it becomes a filed return.
VAT on trademark licensing and transfers
VAT is the third piece, and it is easy to miss because the trademark itself feels like a legal object rather than a supply.
Licensing a trademark is, for VAT purposes, a supply of services. When a UAE taxable person charges a royalty for the use of a mark, that royalty is generally subject to 5% VAT under Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017. Selling or assigning a trademark outright is likewise a supply, with treatment that depends on who the parties are and where the recipient belongs. Cross-border licensing pulls in the place-of-supply and reverse-charge rules, which can shift responsibility for accounting for the VAT from you to the recipient, or vice versa.
The government fees you pay the Ministry to register the mark are a distinct matter from the VAT on any later dealing in it, and the two should never be blurred in the records. If your business is going to license its brand — or is already doing so informally within a group — it is worth mapping the VAT treatment before the first invoice, which is the kind of thing our VAT advisory support is built for.
What infringement actually costs the other side
Registration is only worth what enforcement makes it worth, and Chapter Eight of Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 is where the UAE puts real numbers on it. These are criminal penalties imposed by a court, not administrative fines — which is why a registered mark changes the negotiating position with a copycat so sharply.
Criminal penalties under Federal Decree-Law 36 of 2021
| Article | Conduct | Penalty |
|---|---|---|
| 49 | Counterfeiting a registered trademark, or imitating it so as to mislead the public, on the same or similar goods or services | Imprisonment and/or AED 100,000 – AED 1,000,000 |
| 49(2) | Knowingly using a counterfeited or imitated trademark for commercial purposes | Imprisonment and/or AED 100,000 – AED 1,000,000 |
| 49(3) | Affixing, in bad faith, another party’s trademark to your own goods or services | Imprisonment and/or AED 100,000 – AED 1,000,000 |
| 49(4) | Possessing tools or materials intended for imitating or counterfeiting registered or well-known marks | Imprisonment and/or AED 100,000 – AED 1,000,000 |
| 49(5) | Knowingly importing or exporting goods bearing a counterfeited or imitated trademark | Imprisonment and/or AED 100,000 – AED 1,000,000 |
| 50(1) | Knowingly selling, offering for sale, or holding for sale goods or services bearing a counterfeited, imitated or wrongly affixed mark | Imprisonment up to 1 year and/or AED 50,000 – AED 200,000 |
| 50(2) | Using an unregistered mark in the Article 3 cases, without right, in a way that leads to the belief that it is registered | Imprisonment up to 1 year and/or AED 50,000 – AED 200,000 |
| 51 | Recidivism on any Article 49 or 50 offence | Up to twice the maximum penalty; the court may order closure of the establishment and confiscation of the tools, machines or materials |
| 52 | Any conviction | The court may order publication of the judgment at the convict’s expense |
Source: Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 on Trademarks, Articles 49–52, as published on uaelegislation.gov.ae. In force 2 January 2022 under Article 61; Article 60(1) repealed Federal Law No. 37 of 1992. Checked 5 August 2026. These are penalties on the infringer, imposed by a criminal court — they are not damages payable to you, and a separate civil claim is a separate matter.
Note the reach of Article 49(5) in a trade hub. Knowingly importing or exporting goods bearing a counterfeited mark is itself an offence at the AED 100,000 to AED 1,000,000 level, which is why UAE customs enforcement and trademark registration are practically linked — a registered right is what a border seizure can be built on. Our note on the UAE Federal Customs Authority covers how that side of the system is organised.
Article 50(2) is the one that catches UAE businesses on their own side of the line. Presenting an unregistered mark in a way that suggests it is registered is itself an offence carrying up to a year’s imprisonment and AED 50,000 to AED 200,000. In practical terms: do not put a registration symbol on a mark you have only applied for.
Where an accounting firm fits
To be clear about the boundaries: registering a trademark is a legal process run through the Ministry of Economy, and the filing itself is best handled by the Ministry’s portal or a registered trademark agent. That is not what an accounting firm does, and we would not pretend otherwise.
What we do is everything that sits around the brand once it exists as an asset: recognising and carrying it in the accounts, getting the corporate tax treatment of any royalty income right, setting up defensible transfer pricing where the mark is licensed within a group, and handling the VAT on licensing and assignments. The trademark and the financial treatment of it are two different disciplines — and the founders who come out ahead are the ones who line both up rather than treating the certificate as the finish line.
Bringing it together
Trademark registration in the UAE is not the tangle it is sometimes made out to be. One federal application through the Ministry of Economy, under Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021, protects your brand across all seven emirates for ten years, renewable indefinitely. The steps are defined: search, file, examine, publish, a 30-day opposition window, and then the certificate. Choose your classes deliberately, consider the Madrid Protocol if you sell across borders, and file sooner rather than later so your priority date is early.
The part that outlasts all of that is the financial one. A registered trademark is an asset your company owns — one that belongs on the balance sheet, that can earn royalty income, and that brings corporate tax, transfer pricing and VAT consequences the moment it starts being licensed. Handle the filing as a legal task, handle the asset as a financial one, and keep both moving together. That is the difference between a brand that is merely registered and a brand that is properly owned.
Velmont Crest is a DED-licensed UAE accounting firm providing advisory, preparation and compliance support to SMEs across Dubai mainland and the free zones — from business setup advisory and corporate tax through to accounting and bookkeeping, transfer pricing and VAT. Read more on our insights hub or get in touch via our contact page.
Disclaimer: Velmont Crest is a DED-licensed accounting firm providing advisory, preparation and compliance support services. We are not a law firm, a registered trademark agent, the Ministry of Economy, the Federal Tax Authority, or an FTA-registered tax agent. This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. UAE trademark, corporate tax and VAT rules change and depend on your specific facts — verify current requirements with the Ministry of Economy, the Federal Tax Authority and the Ministry of Finance, and consult a suitably licensed professional before acting.
References
Frequently asked questions
- Do I have to register a trademark to run a business in the UAE?
- No. A trade licence lets you operate; it does not protect your brand name or logo from being used by someone else. Trademark registration is a separate, voluntary step handled by the Ministry of Economy, and it is what gives you the legal right to stop others using a confusingly similar mark. Plenty of UAE businesses trade for years without registering, then discover a competitor has registered a near-identical name — at which point defending the brand is far harder and more expensive. If your name, logo or product identity carries real commercial value, registration turns an informal reputation into an asset you actually own and can enforce.
- What does trademark registration in the UAE cost?
- We are not printing a figure, for an honest reason. Article 57 of Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 says only that the Cabinet shall issue a decision determining the fees. The Decree-Law has no schedule, and Cabinet Resolution No. 57 of 2022 refers throughout to 'the prescribed fees' without stating them. Every AED number in circulation therefore comes from a Cabinet fee decision, the Ministry's own service listing, or a setup agent's marketing page — and only the first two are authoritative. What drives the total: the number of Nice classes, because the UAE has operated on one application per class; the Bulletin publication expense, which Article 15(1) puts on the applicant; a legalised power of attorney; the agent's charges; and renewal every ten years.
- Is registering a business name the same as registering a trademark?
- No, and this is the single most common misunderstanding we see. Reserving a trade name with DET or a free zone authority stops another entity registering the same name in that register — it is an administrative reservation attached to your licence. A trademark registered with the Ministry of Economy is a property right in the name or logo itself, enforceable against anyone using a confusingly similar mark on the goods or services you claimed. You can hold a trade name and still lose the brand, because the two live in different systems with different tests. If the name carries real commercial weight, do both: reserve the trade name for the licence, and file for brand registration in the UAE separately.
- How long does UAE trademark protection last?
- Article 21(1) of Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 sets ten years from the date the application was submitted, renewable for further ten-year periods, so a trademark can be kept alive indefinitely if it is renewed on time. The renewal window is in Article 11(1) of Cabinet Resolution No. 57 of 2022: the last year of the current protection period, plus six months after it. Miss both and Article 22(2) of the Decree-Law removes the mark from the register as of the expiry date of the protection period — backdated, not from the end of the grace period. And under Article 27, once removed, a third party can register the same or a similar mark for the same goods after three years. Diarise the renewal alongside the trade licence, not separately from it.
- Can someone cancel my UAE trademark if I stop using it?
- Yes. Article 24(3) of Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 lets an interested person apply to the Ministry to deregister a trademark that has not been used for five consecutive years, unless emergency circumstances prevented use. That is the provision that undercuts purely defensive filings in classes you never trade in. Two more five-year clocks run the other way and are worth knowing. Article 18(1) makes your ownership indisputable once the mark has been registered and used without interruption for five years with no legal proceedings against it, unless bad faith is proved. And Article 18(2) gives an earlier user of the same mark five years from your registration date to apply to have it removed. So the first five years are the exposed window on both sides.
- Can a trademark be shown as an asset in my company accounts?
- Sometimes, and it depends on how the trademark came to you. Under IAS 38, a brand you build internally — the goodwill attached to your own name — generally cannot be written up as an asset, because its value is too subjective to measure reliably. However, the direct costs of acquiring and registering a trademark, such as official fees and the professional cost of securing it, can usually be capitalised as an intangible asset. A trademark bought from another party is normally recognised at its purchase cost. Because trademarks can be renewed indefinitely, they are often treated as having an indefinite useful life, which means they are tested for impairment rather than amortised over a fixed period.
- Does income from licensing a trademark affect my corporate tax?
- Yes — and it matters. If your company licenses its trademark to another business — a franchisee, a sister company, an overseas affiliate — the royalties it receives feed into the corporate tax computation. Where the licensing is between related parties, the transfer pricing rules under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 expect the royalty to be set at arm's length and documented. Free Zone companies should take care: the reduced Free Zone rate applies only to a narrow category of qualifying intellectual property, and marketing-related IP such as trademarks generally sits outside it. Because so much turns on your facts, confirm the treatment against the current Ministerial Decisions before setting up any intra-group arrangement.
- Is VAT charged on trademark royalties or the sale of a trademark?
- Generally, yes, where a UAE taxable person is involved. Licensing a trademark — letting another party use your mark in return for a fee — is a supply of services under the VAT law, and a royalty charged by a UAE taxable person is typically subject to 5% VAT. Selling or assigning a trademark outright is also a supply, with its own treatment depending on who the parties are and where the recipient belongs. Cross-border licensing brings in the place-of-supply and reverse-charge rules, which can change who accounts for the VAT. The official government fees you pay to the Ministry of Economy to register the mark are a separate matter from the VAT on any later licensing or sale, so keep the two clearly apart in your records.
Filed under: trademark registration, trademark uae, intellectual property, ministry of economy, business setup, brand protection, intangible assets, corporate tax
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