As Thai imports and exports continue to grow, more and more foreign corporations wish to open an office in Thailand to support their trading needs. Often, foreign corporations wish to have a small office established in Thailand without generating any income, with the head office bearing all the costs and expenses. In this situation, a representative office or liaison office seems to be the suitable solution. This article provides an overview of the key issues facing representative offices, including requirements, restrictions, and conditions.

The essence of a contract is the fulfillment of each party’s obligations to perform under the specified terms and conditions to accomplish the contract’s objective. A contract of employment is also a reciprocal agreement—the employer must fulfill its obligations to the employee and the employee must perform its duties for the employer. Failure by one party to perform the duties as agreed will result in the other party having the right to make a claim for compensation for such breach.

In a trend towards greater market liberalization, Thailand has opened up as a venue for issuance and offering of foreign debt securities. Until recently, the issuance and offering of foreign equity-based securities was prohibited, except when offered only to limited groups of recipients, such as offering foreign securities to employees of the foreign issuer or its subsidiaries in Thailand under an employee stock option plan, or offering fully-paid ordinary shares to existing shareholders (i.e., rights offering).

In Thailand, the importation, manufacture, and sale of medicine is governed by the Medicine Act B.E. 2510 (1967). The Act also stipulates the requirements/procedures to apply for a license to import, manufacture, or sell medicine and the duties and obligations with which such license holder must comply. This article provides an overview of the requirements.

The Doctrine of Strict Liability is the rule compelling a wrongdoer for legal responsibility for the damage incurred by an injured person without the need to prove the wrongdoer’s intention to cause, or negligence resulting in, the injury. The doctrine is commonly known to be applied in many countries to product liability, hazardous activities, and certain offenses including intellectual property infringement.

In an attempt to make their brands stand out in the minds of consumers, business owners frequently invent trademarks that evoke a product’s features. What they may not realize, however, is that such trademarks might be unregistrable. According to the Thai Trademark Act, a trademark that is considered descriptive of the applied goods or services shall be deemed nondistinctive and thus unregistrable. In seeking a possible solution to transform descriptive marks into distinctive marks, brand owners sometimes choose to stylize the font in the hope that these marks would become distinctive.

It is very difficult to cancel registered trademarks in Vietnam (even cases of obvious bad faith may take up to two years to resolve, which is both time-consuming and costly to rights owners). This means rights holders and their counsel need to quickly oppose trademark applications prior to registration. Accordingly, it is important to understand the relevant timelines that affect the filing of oppositions in Vietnam, as described in this article.

Section 27 of the Thai Trademark Act allows for the possibility that confusingly similar trademarks may be registered if they have been honestly and concurrently used by their owners. This provision, however, has seldom been put into practice by the Thai Registrar and Board of Trademarks when considering applications for potentially similar marks.