UAE trade name rules are set mainly by Federal Decree-Law No. 50 of 2022 on commercial transactions and the Commercial Register legislation, and they are narrower than most founders assume. The federal text requires a trade name to reflect the actual business honestly, to sit in the commercial register in both Arabic and English, and to appear on your premises and your website. What it does not do is give you a brand. That is a separate registration, under a separate law, with a separate authority, and mixing the two up is the most expensive naming mistake made in Dubai.
Key takeaways
- A trade name is approved by the licensing authority. A trademark is registered with the Ministry of Economy. Holding the first gives you no rights in the second.
- The commercial register holds your trade name in Arabic and English, so a name that cannot survive transliteration will be transliterated for you.
- Article 55 protects a registered trade name only against merchants in a trade of a similar kind, which is a much smaller shield than a trademark.
- Putting a registration symbol on an unregistered mark is a criminal matter under Article 50 of the trademark law, with a fine of AED 50,000 to AED 200,000.
- Selling your company does not automatically sell the trade name with it, and the name cannot be sold on its own either.
Two registrations, two authorities, two different things
The trade name is the name your licence is issued under. You reserve it with the Department of Economy and Tourism in Dubai, or with the free zone authority if you are licensing there, and it becomes part of your entry in the commercial register. Cabinet Resolution No. 107 of 2022, the executive regulations of the Commercial Register decree-law, lists in Article 3 the documents a registration applicant must provide, starting with a trade name reservation certificate carrying the name, the legal form and the activity, on condition that the trade name and the economic activity do not breach public order.
The trademark is the brand. It is registered with the Ministry of Economy under Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021, which came into force on 2 January 2022, and Article 21 gives protection for ten years from the application date, renewable.
A founder who has reserved “Sandline Interiors LLC” with the DET has a licence name. They cannot stop a competitor in Al Quoz from opening as Sandline Design, and they hold no rights across classes of goods and services. One issue we see repeatedly is a company paying for a full identity, signage and a website before anyone checks the trademark register, then finding the name taken in the class they trade in.
What the federal law actually asks of a trade name
Article 53 of Federal Decree-Law No. 50 of 2022, which was issued on 3 October 2022 and took effect on 2 January 2023, sets the substance. Subject to intellectual property legislation, an individual merchant’s trade name consists of their given name and surname. It may also carry particulars about the persons named that relate to the type of trade, and it may be novel. In all cases the trade name must truly reflect the type of business, and must not be misleading or prejudicial to public order or morals. Article 54 then says company trade names follow the statutes in force in the country, which is where the legal form suffix and the authority’s own naming controls come in.
That last point deserves a straight answer rather than a confident one. The detailed word lists that circulate online, covering religious references, government body names and terms such as “international” or “global”, are published and applied by each licensing authority rather than set out in one federal list. We could not find a single consolidated federal schedule of banned words, and any article that presents one as federal law is guessing. Check the specific rules of the authority you are licensing with before you commission a logo.
Article 5 of the Commercial Register decree-law confirms the trade name is part of the registration application, and Article 14 puts the liability for the accuracy of that application on the applicant rather than the authority. If a reservation is refused, Article 18 gives you fifteen days from notification to file a reasoned grievance, and the authority has thirty days to decide it.
The Arabic version is a design decision, not a translation job
Article 2 of Cabinet Resolution No. 107 of 2022 lists what the commercial register holds about each establishment, and item (c) is the trade name in both Arabic and English. Both versions exist from day one whether or not anybody on your side thought about the Arabic.
This reaches your brand files. Invented English words transliterate unpredictably, and a coined name that reads well in Latin letters can land in Arabic as something awkward or already attached to a different word. Names built on real words transliterate cleanly. Initialisms are the worst case, because an Arabic reader gets letters with no meaning and no pronunciation cue.
From a practical standpoint, test three things before you commit: say the Arabic transliteration aloud to a native speaker who has not seen the English, check that the Arabic setting of the name works at small sizes in your intended weight, and make sure your logo design has an Arabic lockup rather than an English mark with Arabic bolted underneath. Signage companies, government portals and your own invoices will all use the Arabic. It is not an optional variant.
The protection a trade name gives you is narrower than you think
Article 55 is the protective provision, and it is worth reading precisely. Once a trade name is registered, no other merchant may use that name for a trade which is of a similar kind. Where a merchant’s own name and surname resemble a trade name already on the register, they must add particulars that distinguish them from it.
The phrase doing the work there is “of a similar kind”. A registered trade name blocks confusingly similar names in the same line of business. It does not reserve a word across the economy. Two UAE companies can quite legitimately hold near-identical names if one runs a logistics business and the other a salon, and neither has done anything wrong.
A trademark behaves differently. Article 3 of the trademark law refuses registration of a mark identical or similar to a mark already lodged or registered by a third party for the same or related goods or services where the use would suggest a connection or affect the owner’s interests, and clauses 13 and 14 extend that to copies, imitations, translations, Arabizations and vocal translations of a famous mark, including across goods that are not similar. If your name is going on packaging, an app or advertising, the trademark register is the one that matters.
The trademark rules that decide whether your name survives
What will not be registered
Article 3 of Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 lists what may neither be treated as a trademark nor registered as one. The clauses that catch UAE startups most often are these.
- A mark lacking any distinctive feature, or made up of the ordinary designation for the goods or services. “Dubai Cleaning Services” is a description, not a mark.
- Expressions, drawings or marks offending public morals or the public order.
- Public logos, flags, military rank insignia, badges of honour, coins, banknotes and other symbols of this or another state, or any imitation of them. A stylised falcon that reads as a national emblem is a risk.
- Marks identical or similar to symbols of a religious nature.
- Geographical names where use would likely cause confusion about the source or origin.
- A third party’s name, surname, photo, logo or nickname, unless they or their heirs approved it in advance.
- Marks that mislead the public or contain false information about origin, source or features, and marks containing a trade name owned by a third party.
Article 2 is broader than people expect. Names, words, signatures, letters, symbols, figures, packaging, shapes, a colour or set of colours, three-dimensional marks and holograms can all be trademarks, and the article extends to sound and smell. A sonic logo is registrable subject matter.
The registration symbol mistake that carries a fine
This one is a design file problem with a legal consequence, and it turns up constantly. Clause 15 of Article 3 refuses registration to marks that include expressions such as “franchise”, “franchised”, “registered”, “registered drawing” or “copyright”, or similar words. Separately, Article 50 provides that using an unregistered trademark in the cases in Article 3, without any right, on your papers, commercial documents, goods or services in a way that leads people to believe the mark is registered, carries imprisonment of up to one year and a fine of not less than AED 50,000 and not more than AED 200,000.
In plain terms: do not put a registration symbol in your logo, your website footer or your brochure until the mark is actually registered. Designers add it as a flourish and nobody checks. For comparison, Article 49 sets the penalty for counterfeiting or knowingly using a counterfeit mark at AED 100,000 to AED 1,000,000, so these are not nominal amounts.
Selling, buying and inheriting a trade name
Articles 57 to 59 cover what happens when the business changes hands, and the defaults surprise people.
A trade name may not be disposed of separately from the business assets it belongs to, unless other legislation says otherwise. Going the other way, if the owner disposes of the business assets, that disposal does not include the trade name unless it is provided for explicitly or implicitly. So buying a company does not automatically buy its name, and the name cannot be sold on its own as an asset.
Anyone taking over the business may not use the predecessor’s trade name unless it has passed to them or the predecessor authorised it, and they must add particulars showing the transfer of ownership. Article 58 sets a fine of at least AED 10,000 for breaching that. Where the trade name does transfer, Article 59 puts the new owner into the predecessor’s rights and obligations under that name, with a five year limitation period on claims for the predecessor’s obligations from the date the business assets transferred. Article 56 adds that a merchant may not take up another merchant’s trade name after it has expired or been removed until a year has passed.
Anyone buying a small Dubai business for its brand has to name the trade name in the sale documents. Choosing the entity that will hold it is a related question, covered in our comparison of the sole establishment, FZE and LLC.
What the name has to do on your website
Two provisions turn naming into a web development task, and most UAE sites we audit miss both.
Article 56 of the commercial transactions law requires a merchant to write their trade name on the facade of their physical or virtual business assets, and to carry out commercial transactions under that trade name. The wording covers the online presence, so the licensed name belongs on the site rather than only the brand name. Where a trading brand differs from the licensed entity, the usual answer is the brand in the header and the full legal name in the footer and on invoices.
Article 7 of Cabinet Resolution No. 107 of 2022 then requires the Commercial Register Number to be used and mentioned in all documents and printed material, in business and transactions with third parties, and on the website of the establishment in a clear and accessible manner. A one-line footer carrying the legal name and the register number satisfies both, and takes a developer about ten minutes. Figures and requirements here are indicative and were read on the official legislation portal on 18 September 2026; this is general information, not legal advice.
A naming process that clears and still brands well
Run these in order, because each step is cheaper than the one after it.
- Write eight to twelve candidates, and for each one write the activity it describes in one line. If the line and the name disagree, Article 53 is going to be a problem.
- Transliterate every candidate into Arabic and read them aloud to a native speaker before you fall in love with one.
- Search the Ministry of Economy trademark register in the classes you will actually trade in, and search the licensing authority’s trade name portal separately. They are different databases and a clear result in one says nothing about the other.
- Check the .ae and .com domains and the handles at the same time, because a name that clears both registers and has no usable domain is still a problem.
- Reserve the trade name with your licensing authority.
- Only then commission the identity, and file the trademark application in parallel with the design work rather than after it.
- Keep the registration symbol out of every file until the certificate arrives.
The order matters more than the creativity. A name that clears on step three and disappoints slightly beats a name everybody loves that gets abandoned after the signage goes up.
If you are naming a new UAE company, the cheapest sequence is clearance first and identity second. Our team handles branding and the website that carries the name, and works alongside the free zone and mainland options set out in our business setup solutions. Bring us the shortlist before the logo, not after it.
Legal references here are indicative and were checked against the UAE legislation portal on 18 September 2026. Laws, authority rules and fees change, and this is general information rather than legal advice; take professional advice on your own name and filings. Cover photo: Sharjah Corniche – panoramio (1) by Jaseem Hamza, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).
