How KSA’s Supreme Court Stopped Bad Faith Filing of Trademarks

The Saudi Commercial Courts recently upheld important precedent-setting rulings and explicitly highlighted “bad faith” in trademark disputes.

In recognizing bad faith as a reason to disqualify trademark ownership and cancel acquired registration, this new improvement brings an important precedent to support all efforts by legitimate international and local brand owners to improve the trademark practice in this area.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is the largest economy in the Middle East and North Africa region and is set on becoming one of the top economies in the world based on gross domestic product. Many international brand owners missed the opportunity to register their trademark rights there in the past because of preexisting “bad-faith filers” and/or holders of registered rights. The local courts and competent authorities were unable to consider the ground of bad faith as one of the merits to oppose or cancel a trademark application because trademark legislation—including the national and/or Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) unified trademark law as applicable in KSA—did not explicitly cite the term as one of the acceptable grounds to reject trademark applications and/or cancel registered marks.

A few trademark experts in the region thought that the existing laws and legal framework required, explicitly and/or implicitly, “good faith” in filing/acquiring trademark rights. Therefore, many advocacy efforts and dialogues took place in the last few years with key authorities in KSA, including the Saudi Intellectual Property Authority (SAIP), to illustrate the existing laws in KSA and request an enhancement of the interpretation of some provisions to support legitimate brand owners’ interests, that is, by allowing them to seek to cancel marks registered in bad faith. Efforts did indeed result in successful outcomes in two different court cases in 2024 and 2025 where marks registered in bad faith were removed from the registry. In both recent cases that related to trademarks called SiiP, the Saudi local courts upheld cancelation of the registered marks, citing bad-faith filing as an essential reasoning.

In a general context of trademarks filed in bad faith, the term refers to an application to register a mark made dishonestly or falling short of the standards of acceptable commercial behavior(s) as well as with knowledge of legitimate trademark prior ownership. Bad faith can be divided into two broad categories: bad faith against a third party and bad faith against the trademark system. Recent cases in the Kingdom have recognized bad-faith claims against third parties; however, these claims have been limited in scope. This is largely due to the current trademark system and its official fee structure, which does not make abuse of the system as pressing an issue as it is in other jurisdictions.

To provide context, the cases were initiated by an Asian brand owner that had been supplying products under Class 30 to markets in the Kingdom and across the GCC for several years. Despite this longstanding presence, the brand owner had not secured adequate trademark registrations in KSA. As a result, local entities in Saudi Arabia registered identical or highly similar marks, using the same words, devices, and colors to cover the same and/or relevant Nice Classifications of products, and claimed ownership of the marks.

Although a few oppositions were filed with the SAIP, they yielded no meaningful progress for the legitimate brand owner. Consequently, the only viable legal recourse was to initiate cancellation actions before the competent courts in the Kingdom. In these proceedings, the plaintiff argued bad faith and presented a range of legal and factual arguments to support two key points:

• That the contested marks were filed in bad faith; and
• That the court had the authority under applicable Saudi trademark law to cancel such registrations.

The court carefully considered the legal arguments and evidence. After multiple hearings and deliberations, it ruled in favor of the foreign brand owner. The court found that the defendants had registered counterfeit versions—that is, copies and imitations as the court called it in its judgment—of the plaintiff’s marks, which were already registered in the country of origin and several other jurisdictions. It concluded that the defendants acted in bad faith when filing the disputed marks. Additionally, the court noted the striking similarity between the registered marks and the plaintiff’s original marks. This, combined with the defendants’ use of the plaintiff’s mark in the country of origin and subsequent registration with SAIP, further substantiated the claim of bad faith.

From a legal standpoint, the court interpreted Article 7.1 of the GCC Trademark Law, as applicable in Saudi Arabia, to require good faith in trademark filings. The article states:

“Any person who registers a mark in good faith shall be deemed its sole owner. The ownership of such mark may not be disputed if the person who registers it uses it uninterruptedly for at least five (5) years from the date of registration without an action being lodged against him concerning its validity.”

The court held that a well-established violation of Article 7 justifies cancellation. Accordingly, it ruled that the registrations made in bad faith were invalid and should be canceled. This progress is indeed very promising, and this step is important in reinforcing the Kingdom local courts’ commitment to follow the best international practice when ruling in trademark disputes.

Importantly, INTA recognized the global problem of the bad-faith filing of trademarks. The INTA Board of Directors issued a Request for Action in 2020 to illustrate the recommended procedures to address bad-faith trademark applications and registration. The Request for Action stated that the abusive filing and bad-faith use of third-party trademarks causes significant consumer confusion and/or damage to rights holders and undermines the purpose and function of trademark registration systems worldwide.

The INTA Task Force on Bad Faith supported this objective in many regions, including the Middle East, through high-level advocacy efforts that included attending several meetings with decision makers, running educational sessions, holding policy dialogs, and spreading awareness among trademark experts from the judicial and administrative authorities. KSA was one of the jurisdictions that worked with INTA on this task. We, as INTA members in the Middle East—including INTA Bad Faith Task Force members, and trademark attorneys—are happy to reinforce the importance of addressing bad-faith filings. We are pleased to see this result and urge INTA members and brand owners to continue efforts to build on this success and continue to advocate and raise bad faith in opposition proceedings before SAIP and other trademark offices in the GCC neighboring countries.

With these developments in KSA, we believe the other GCC jurisdictions, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, can follow in its footsteps by interpreting the protection under the GCC trademark law to favor legitimate brand owners and allow them to fight bad-faith filers. As for the UAE, while the country applies its Federal National Trademark Law issued in 2021, bad faith was recognized in the past; in 2016, the Supreme Court affirmed an administrative decision issued by the Trademark Office (opposition examiner).  This decision recognized the principle of bad faith in filing the mark, accepted the opposition action, and rejected the trademark application. The case was related to a trademark called SUGAR DADDY’S.

In conclusion, while KSA’s domestic trademark law does not explicitly include bad faith as a ground to file an opposition and/or cancellation action, recent court decisions have confirmed that bad faith can now be argued, raised, and considered in trademark disputes. Local courts, and arguably the SAIP, may now assess whether a trademark was filed in good faith, allowing legitimate brand owners to challenge abusive filings. More advocacy efforts, awareness-building, and policy dialogues are essential to build on this success in trademark disputes in the Middle East region.

Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of this article, readers are urged to check independently on matters of specific concern or interest.

© 2025 International Trademark Association