News - New Consumer Protection Act – registration of business trading names:

Notes on the Consumer Protection Act, 2008 and the registration of business (trading) names:

1.) The Consumer Protection Act, 2008, comes into force on 1 April 2011. The Act will prohibit the use of unregistered business names unless a person trades under his or her full names as recorded in an identity document. This merely means that a person who want to trade under a business or trading name (being a name that is not registered as company or CC name or registered otherwise under some law) would have to register that business name under the said Consumer Protection Act. The criteria for business names are dealt with in the Act and the process for application for registration would be prescribed in regulations which are currently in the process of being drafted. Such registrations would be the responsibility of the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission as envisaged in the new Companies Act, 2008.

2.) Item 5 of Schedule 2 to the Consumer Protection Act, however, contains important transitional provisions relating to the date on which the new requirements would become effective as well as their application to existing business or trading names.

1. In the first instance the new provisions requiring registration of business names could only become effective a minimum of one year after the Act comes into operation, and
2. The prohibition on the use of unregistered business names would not apply to business or trading names that
   have been in use for more than a year from the date on which those provisions came into force.

3.) It would of course be advisable to eventually register business names that are in use as such registration would afford the necessary protection to its proprietor. Alternatively, business names could be registered under the Companies Act (both the existing and the new Act) as defensive names. The latter registration would, however, have to be renewed every second year.

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