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File description
Trade Register
Name: The National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland
Postal address: P.O. Box 1150, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland
Street address: Arkadiankatu 6 A, 00100 Helsinki
Tel. +358 (0)9 6939 500
Under the Trade Register Act (Kaupparekisterilaki 129/1979), the Trade Register is kept by the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland. The Trade Register contains information on traders, i.e. businesses.
The duties of the Trade Register consist of serving and supervising the business life and maintaining and improving the legal certainty in business life. In addition to the effect of publicity, some of the entries in the Trade Register have a constitutive effect.
The Trade Register Act lays down, for each company type, the details that businesses must report for entry in the Trade Register. In addition to the Trade Register Act and the Trade Register Decree (Kaupparekisteriasetus 208/1979), the legislation concerning various company types, such as the Limited Liability Companies Act (Osakeyhtiölaki 624/2006) and the Co-operatives Act (Osuuskuntalaki 1488/2001), and the legislation concerning businesses in general, such as the Act on the Restructuring of Companies (Laki yrityksen saneerauksesta 47/1993), define which details are entered in the Trade Register.
Persons and their positions that have been reported to the Trade Register will be entered in the business’s details in the register. For example the following positions will be registered: private trader; partners; chairperson, members and deputy members of the board of directors; managing director; auditors; holders of a procuration; and persons authorised to sign for the company.
Under section 3a of the Trade Register Act, the following personal details of natural persons to be registered at the Trade Register are entered in the register:
Normally, the data are entered in the Trade Register on the basis of notifications submitted by businesses. At present, most businesses have to be reported to the Trade Register. The basic details of a new business and its activities have to be reported to the register. When a change occurs in the details entered in the Trade Register, the business must report the new details for registration.
Under section 21a of the Trade Register Act, the National Board of Patents and Registration can update its records and, by using the Finnish Population Information System, check the personal details given in notifications and their enclosures.
Under section 21 of the Business Prohibition Act (Laki liiketoimintakiellosta 1059/1985), the Legal Register Centre of Finland provides the Trade Register with details of business prohibitions in force and when they begin and end. These details are then updated in the Trade Register System.
Under section 19 of the Trade Register Act and section 5 of the Decree on the Restructuring of Companies (Asetus yrityksen saneerauksesta 55/1993), courts of law have to notify the National Board of Patents and Registration that a public summons has been issued to the creditors of a company registered at the Trade Register, that a company is declared bankrupt, that bankruptcy proceedings have been dismissed or that the decision to declare the company bankrupt has been cancelled, that a temporary prohibition in accordance with the Act on the Restructuring of Companies has been issued and that the restructuring proceedings have begun and have been terminated.
Under section 1 of the Trade Register Act, anyone is entitled to obtain information from the entries in the Trade Register. Trade Register information can be obtained online from the Virre Information Service, by ordering extracts, certificates or documents, or by inquiring by telephone. Contract clients can have Trade Register information directly delivered to their own application through a technical interface. Notifications and enclosures submitted by businesses can be studied at the National Board of Patents and Registration. Notifications submitted by housing companies can be studied at the Local Register Office in the municipality where the housing company is managed.
As a rule, the details contained in the Trade Register are disclosed through machine-readable selections or message-based data transmission to credit reference companies, the Finnish Tax Administration, insurance companies, information service companies and the information service of the European Business Register (EBR).
The manual data are stored in separate archives dedicated for this purpose. Only the staff of the National Board of Patents and Registration has access to the archives through a passage control.
The ADP system of the Trade Register is operated on a mainframe computer that is located in a fireproof and locked space. Only authorised persons responsible for the ADP operations have access there. The system is accessed from PCs and requires a user ID and a password. The users are divided in different groups that have different access rights. A person responsible for the register grants authorisations and gives access rights to the groups. The file maintenance on PCs takes place in premises that are locked and have passage control.
Backup copies are created from the ADP system every day and an alternate system is provided for catastrophe and emergency situations.
Data subjects can inspect what information on them is entered in the Trade Register, or that there are no such entries. It is possible to check one’s data free of charge once a calendar year. The information on a person can be checked only with regard to those registered details and positions that have been reported to the Trade Register on 1 January 1994 or thereafter. Earlier details can be checked only in the details of a business that clients particularly have chosen to be checked.
A request for access to data must be filed in writing with the National Board of Patents and Registration and it must be personally signed. The request must state the name and personal identity code of the person in question. The information is printed on paper and given to the client or delivered by post to the address the client has given. The information can also be checked at the Client Service of the National Board of Patents and Registration or at a Local Register Office upon proving one's identity.
The correctness of personal details is checked against the Finnish Population Information System, if the person in question has a Finnish personal identity code. The details of persons with no Finnish personal identity code are checked against the documents that the business in question has submitted (a copy of the passport, for example). If the information (person’s name, address, citizenship, incapacity) received from the Population Information System is incorrect, requests for rectification or change are to be filed with the controller of the Finnish Population Register. Requests for rectification concerning persons without a Finnish personal identity code are to be filed with the National Board of Patents and Registration.