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Trademark registration in the UAE is national, not tied to where your company is licensed. A UAE trademark is registered federally with the Ministry of Economy and, once granted, protects your mark across the whole country — mainland and free zones alike. So whether your business is licensed on the mainland or in a free zone, you file the same national trademark application; you don't need one trademark for the free zone and another for the mainland. What differs by jurisdiction is your trade licence and where you're permitted to do business, not the geographic reach of your registered trademark rights. Note the distinction between your trade name (registered with the licensing authority when you set up the company) and your trademark (registered with the Ministry of Economy) — a trade-name registration is not the same as trademark protection, and relying only on a licence does not stop others using a similar brand. If you operate across several emirates or plan to expand, a single national trademark is usually the right foundation. A UAE IP lawyer on LEXAI can confirm the filing strategy for your structure.

A registered UAE trademark is a property right that you can sell (assign) outright or license to others to use, under the federal trademark law (Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021). An assignment transfers ownership of the mark to a new owner, while a licence lets a third party use the mark on agreed terms — for example exclusively or non-exclusively, for certain goods, territories or a set period — without giving up ownership. To be effective and enforceable against third parties, transfers and licences generally need to be properly documented and recorded with the Ministry of Economy's trademark registry, so the register reflects the current owner and any licensees. Getting this right matters: an unrecorded transfer can create confusion about who actually holds the rights, and a poorly drafted licence can leave quality control, royalties or termination unclear. For franchising and distribution especially, the trademark licence is often central to the deal. Confirm the recordal requirements with the Ministry of Economy. A UAE IP lawyer on LEXAI can draft the assignment or licence and handle the registry recordal.

Copyright in your code arises automatically in the UAE the moment it is written — no registration is needed — but automatic copyright belongs to the author, and that is exactly your problem with freelancers. A developer you merely commission does not automatically hand you ownership of what they write; without a written assignment, you may only have a licence to use the code, while the freelancer remains free to argue rights over it. So the protection you need is contractual. Every freelancer and employee agreement should contain an express assignment of all intellectual property in the work to your company, effective on creation, covering code, designs, documentation and improvements, together with confidentiality obligations and a commitment to sign any further documents needed to perfect ownership. For developers outside the UAE, make sure the assignment language also works under their local law. Beyond contracts, run basic hygiene: keep the repository under company accounts, restrict access by role, remove leavers immediately, and treat the codebase as a trade secret. Fix the paperwork for past contributions now with retroactive assignments while relationships are still good. A lawyer who handles technology contracts can draft assignment terms that hold up across the borders you are hiring in.

You still have options, though registration would have made this much easier. In the UAE, trademark rights flow primarily from registration with the Ministry of Economy, but an unregistered brand is not entirely unprotected: your registered trade name has standing, and unfair competition rules can be used against a competitor who deliberately imitates your name and logo to confuse customers in the same line of business. Three years of genuine trading gives you evidence of prior use and reputation, which matters in both directions. Act on two fronts at once. First, file your own trademark application now — registration is what gives you durable, enforceable rights going forward. Second, gather proof: dated invoices, marketing material, social media history, and examples of actual customer confusion. With that, you can send a formal cease-and-desist, complain to the relevant economic department about the misleading trade name, and oppose or seek cancellation of any trademark application the competitor files. Speed matters, because if they register the mark first, your position weakens considerably. An intellectual property lawyer in the UAE can assess the strength of your prior-use evidence and run the registration and enforcement steps in parallel.