Saudi Arabia will introduce major new commercial and trade name laws this week.
New laws will allow simplified commercial registrations and registration of trade names in English for the first time.
Ministry of Commerce official spokesperson Abdulrahman Al Hussein said that next Thursday, Shawwal 5 (corresponding to April 3), will be a significant day in the commercial landscape as the Kingdom’s new Law of Commercial Register and Law of Trade Names come into effect.
New Saudi commercial law
The new Law of Commercial Register introduces major changes, Al Hussein remarked. Among the key changes are the elimination of subsidiary registers, with a single commercial register now being sufficient.
Additionally, the law removes the requirement to specify the city of registration, allowing one commercial registration to apply across all regions of the Kingdom.
The law cancels the expiration date for the commercial register, requiring only an annual confirmation of the data, the spokesman stated.
Under the law, the commercial registration number will serve as the establishment’s unified number starting with 7.
Existing subsidiary registers are granted a five-year grace period to rectify their status in accordance with the new regulations.
Regarding the Law of Trade Names, Al Hussein explained that the new regulations allow for the reservation and registration of trade names in English, including letters or numbers.
This marks a departure from the previous law, which permitted only Arabic names without foreign characters or numbers.
The law enables the management of trade names independently from the establishment, allowing for the transfer of their ownership, while prohibiting the registration of identical or similar names for different establishments, even if their activities differ.
Al Hussein noted that the law also includes regulations for reserving family names as trade names and establishes criteria for prohibited or misleading names in Saudi Arabia.
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