Introduction: Description of the Business Establishment
The name of my establishment is Abu Dhabi National oil company, and the company has the above logo. The company’s website is www.adnoc.ae. Due to the development in technologies, third parties can create and register domain names identical to the trademark of another company. To protect against such crimes, Emirati law has put legislation to ensure company properties are protected (Ness, 2020). Emirati law enabled ae domain administration in 2007, and it acts as the regulatory operator and facilitates dispute settlement over domain names. The body is also responsible for establishing and enforcing policies for the regulation of the ae domain. To protect the company’s name, website, and logo under the emirate law, Abu Dhabi national oil company has put up measures to ensure they are protected, and there are no fake websites that can be used to deceive customers.
With the rapid development in technologies, the company has registered itself with the telecommunications Regulatory authority. In addition, the company has registered its trademark with ae domain administration to ensure its business name, logo, and website are protected. Registration with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) patent and trademark office has enabled the company to acquire extra weight to protect its brand from attackers and has helped it gain a degree of legal cover against infringements claims.
The Legal Environment for the Business
The United Arab Emirates legal system provides a favorable business environment. It also offers and implements a legal framework that allows free zones and fosters an attractive business environment through delivering 100% incentives to primarily foreign-owned companies. The domain provides incentives such as zero taxation on their income and accepts foreign companies from foreign exchange controls (Younies, 2020). There is also a draft foreign investment law under discussion to allow for a decrease in restrictions for foreign investments and permit foreign ownership of companies operating in certain zones and outside the free zone.
The move is aiming at encouraging the transfer of technology and innovations in the industrial sector. In addition, the legal environment provided for the parties entering the UAE to adopt the foreign law, particularly the English law, to ensure there are good business relationships. However, the companies must complete the environment contract, register with commercial agencies, and conclude agreements with the UAE government entities for public considerations before starting a business (Kalimullina, 2020). When bidding for tenders in the UAE, the legal framework provides that any company considering submitting bids must seek legal advice before submitting the proposal and agree to assume the binding agreement.
Generally, the business laws in the United Arab Emirates protect health and the environment and also ensures there is smooth and fair conduction of businesses. All responsible entrepreneurs govern their business, protect labor consumer and intellectual property rights, protect the health, safety, and environment and ensure they manage the free zones where their businesses are located.
Components and Types of Intellectual Property
The components and types of intellectual property include trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Trade secrets have things such as the products you are dealing with, software, processes, new inventions, and the different marketing strategies a company uses. Patents are short-time protection used by companies in protecting inventions and discoveries that are new and non-obvious and useful for accompanying. They include an article on the manufacturer machines, new process, and composition of the matter. Copyrights are intellectual properties that protect the original works of authorship. Copyrights are automatic and, once created it becomes individual property. The last personal property is the trademark which are phrases, words, and symbols that distinguishes products and services of one company from another company.
To protect its intellectual property both locally and internationally, Abu Dhabi national oil company signed a partnership agreement with the Abu Dhabi technology development committee in November 2014. The deal aims to develop and manage intellectual properties for its group of companies. Through the agreement, the committee provides Abu Dhabi national oil company with customized solutions that assist them in the rollout of support and development for employees from the conception of ideas to patent protection. Besides, the company also offers an IP management system that enables researchers and inventors to consider their patents as a valuable contribution to the development and helps in all IP operations (Zhang, 2018). The technology development committee ensures the companies’ full patent processes and all the company’s intellectual property are protected both locally and internationally outside the borders of the United Arab Emirates.
Special Conditions in Contracts
Contracts are an essential part of a company. Every company has its terms and conditions for contracts, and they should be adhered to strictly. When binding a contract with a person or a given external body with a company, the company representatives should always make contracts that are beneficial to the company, and in case you realize that something is not working right, you have a clause that allows you to go back and settle the disputes accordingly. Abu Dhabi National Oil has had such issues, and they are no longer new to us. What the company does is they have clauses that guide both parties in case one breaches the contract. This is referred to as Vitiation in law. Vitiation might arise due to the following occurrences:
Misrepresentation
Sometimes the company gets into a contract and later realizes that the body it made the contract with gave some false information. It could be this error was fraudulent, negligent, or innocent. The vitiation clause in the company contracts provides room to settle such issues.
Mistakes
Mistakes are a common thing when making contracts. You often find that a mistake occurred, and you have to back and agree on something you had not touched on in a contract. Our company is aware of such, and we ensure that after such mistakes happens, we must renegotiate on disputes arising from such mistake and all the company contracts at Abu Dhabi National Oil have provisions for such issues.
Handling Receipt of Goods in Violation of the Contract Specifications
On some occasions this has also been a challenge to the company. You find that the company goods imported from abroad have not met the specifications agreed upon by the company and the respective company supplying the materials. This is a breach of the contract, and the necessary steps have to be taken to ensure that the responsibility for the goods is handled by the supplier from abroad (ALBAHAR, 2018). The company does not accept any liability of the goods delivered as not per the contract; the company assumes that the seller knew of the defect on the goods, and they are not received by the company officials. The next thing is always to launch a complaint about the seller to supply the failure of the agreed goods to which the company take legal action. Even if the company receives goods and realizes later that the agreed specifications were never met, the liability is on the seller. As long as the failure to meet the specifications is attributed to seller, the company does not take any responsibility. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company is always careful on these as it can be a tremendous risk to the company’s reputation. Goods that have not met the agreed specifications are considered substandard, and are not accepted.
Minimum Wage and Age for Work in UAE
The UAE labor market does not have a minimum wage, but there are clear laws that govern the wage system. Like if you are working with a contract form, the contract has to be guided by the existing laws and regulations. As much as there might be no minimum wage specifications, the rules are very articulate on the worker’s remuneration formulas. The government very well protects the workers in UAE.
The UAE law does not allow employment for children below 15 years. If you are employing a child, you need to have the following documents. First, one has to have a birth certificate from a certified and competent medical officer who is authorized to offer such by the health authorities. Second, the person should have a medical fitness certificate from a certified and qualified medical officer. For a particular job, and written consent from the parent or guardian of the child.
Conclusion
United Arab Emirates has a high score in the business global ranking despite a dip in the overall ranking. The Emirati law provides a conducive environment for business to operate in addition to offering 100% incentives to the foreign owned companies. Such laws have enabled Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to thrive and become among the top ranked gas and oil suppliers in the world. Starting business in United Arab Emirates is also easy because of a conducive legal environment.
References
Ness, K. J., Exposito Gonzalez, J. J., Iftikhar Choudhry, B., Torres Premoli, J. E., & Couzigou, E. (2020). Directional Difficulty Index Across Different Offshore Fields in a National Oil Operating Company in the Middle East Reveals Market Variations and the Adoption of Disruptive Technologies Impact in Drilling Operations. In Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference. Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Younies, H., & Na, T. (2020). Effect of cybercrime laws on protecting citizens and businesses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Journal of Financial Crime.
Kalimullina, M. (2020). Islamic finance in Russia: A market review and the legal environment. Global Finance Journal.
Zhang, J., Gu, Z., Jang, J., Wu, H., Stoecklin, M. P., Huang, H., & Molloy, I. (2018). Protecting intellectual property of deep neural networks with watermarking. In Proceedings of the 2018 on Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (pp. 159-172).
Olwan, R. (2021). Intellectual property management for small and medium-sized enterprises in the United Arab Emirates. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice.
Baralla, G., Ibba, S., Marchesi, M., Tonelli, R., & Missineo, S. (2018). A blockchain based system to ensure transparency and reliability in food supply chain. In European conference on parallel processing (pp. 379-391). Springer, Cham.
Malit Jr, F. T., & Oliver, T. (2020). Labor Migration and Deskilling in the United Arab Emirates: Impacts on Cameroonian Labor Migrants’ Labor Market Employment Status and Welfare. In Migrants and Comparative Education (pp. 125-142). Brill Sense.
ALBAHAR, I. A. (2018). Comparison Grounds for Construction Contracts Termination under UAE Law and FIDIC Standard Contracts (Doctoral dissertation, The British University in Dubai.
