Business Registration Act
(CHAPTER 32, Section 11(10))
Business Registration (Identical Names) Rules
R 1
G.N. No. S 23/2003

REVISED EDITION 2004
(29th February 2004)
[13th January 2003]
Citation
1.  These Rules may be cited as the Business Registration (Identical Names) Rules.
Identical names
2.—(1)  For the purposes of section 11 (1) (b) and (c) of the Act —
(a)in determining whether one name is identical to another, the following shall be disregarded:
(i)“The”, where it is the first word of the name;
(ii)“Private”, “Pte”, “Sendirian”, “Sdn”, “Limited”, “Ltd”, “Berhad” and “Bhd”;
(iii)the following words or expressions where they appear at the end of the name , except where the business and corporation concerned are related to each other:
“company”, “and company”, “corporation”, “Incorporated”, “Asia”, “Asia Pacific”, “International”, “Singapore”, “South Asia”, “South East Asia” and “Worldwide”;
(iv)any word or expression which, in the opinion of the Registrar, is intended to represent any word or expression in sub-paragraph (iii), except where the business and corporation concerned are related to each other;
(v)the plural version of the name;
(vi)the type and case of letters, accents, spacing between letters, brackets, parenthesis and punctuation mark; and
(b)the symbol “&” shall have the same meaning as the word “and”.
[S 340/2004 wef 01/02/2004]
(2)  For the purposes of paragraph (1)(a)(iii) and (iv), a business is related to a corporation if the corporation is the person carrying on that business.
[S 340/2004 wef 01/02/2004]
Mediation
3.  The Registrar may, with a view to resolving any dispute over the use of a name, refer the persons referred to in section 11(1) to (4) of the Act to mediation before giving any direction under that section.