No. S 23
Business Registration Act
(CHAPTER 32)
Business Registration
(Identical Names)
Rules 2003
In exercise of the powers conferred by section 11(10) of the Business Registration Act, the Registrar of Businesses hereby makes the following Rules:
Citation and commencement
1.  These Rules may be cited as the Business Registration (Identical Names) Rules 2003 and shall come into operation on 13th January 2003.
Identical names
2.  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:
“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 referred to in sub-paragraph (iii);
(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”.
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.
Made this 8th day of January 2003.
JUTHIKA RAMANATHAN
Registrar of Businesses,
Singapore.
[RCB0501B/KCC/F200201519T; AG/LEG/SL/32/1998/1 Vol. 1]