Myanmar’s State Administration Council has specified the enforcement date of the country’s 2019 Trademark Law as April 1, 2023—confirming a recent announcement from Myanmar’s Intellectual Property Department (IPD) to certified trademark representatives in the country. The official public announcement came in Notification No. 82/2023, which was dated March 10, 2023, and published in the government-owned daily newspaper the following day. The planned next step is the promulgation of the Trademark Rules to establish substantive procedures on trademark-related matters for trademark applications under the new system. The rules, which are necessary to establish procedures for collecting official fees, are expected to be issued in March 2023. Once the Trademark Rules are established and the Trademark Law comes into force, the second phase of the IPD’s “soft opening” period will commence—expected to occur on April 3, 2023, if there are no further changes. In this second phase, mark owners can pay the official fees for trademark applications filed within the first phase of the soft opening. According to IPD officials, marks recorded under Myanmar’s old system or used in the country can still be filed together with payment during the soft opening’s second phase, either in person by the mark owner or through a certified representative via the online system. Even if such a previously recorded mark is registered after April 1, 2023, the application during the second phase can still reserve the earliest possible filing date under the new first-to-file system. This second phase will continue until the “grand opening” of the IPD commences, unless officials make further announcements to the contrary. IPD officials have confirmed that the earliest possible filing date of the new system will be the date of the IPD’s grand opening. In light of the ongoing and planned developments, the grand opening is expected to occur

Digital asset litigation is one of the most cutting-edge types of litigation in Thailand. There are factual, technical, regulatory, and legal challenges and hurdles for the parties to the dispute throughout all procedural stages. This is mainly because digital assets are different in nature from more conventional types of assets, as they are digitally created and used on a blockchain network. Legal Status The first issue to be aware of in approaching digital asset litigation is the legal status of digital assets. Under Thai law, there are two key terms concerning digital assets’ legal status: “thing” and “property.” Things are tangible objects, while property provides a much wider range of meaning. Property could be anything—including intangible objects that may be of value and able to be appropriated. It is fairly clear that digital assets are not a “thing” since they are not tangible. However, determining whether digital assets are “property” is even more complicated. Although digital assets are intangible objects, one might argue that, unlike fiat money, they do not have any inherent value but are rather conferred value based on certain people’s perspective. (For example, the Bank of Thailand expressed this opinion of bitcoin in 2014.) Some may even argue that digital assets cannot be possessed and therefore cannot be appropriated. According to these arguments, digital assets should not be regarded as a property either. Legal Grounds Determining whether digital assets are things, property, or something else altogether is crucial to any subsequent litigation. In Thailand, the party initiating the lawsuit (the plaintiff) generally has to state the relevant legal grounds for the complaint—that is, the different relevant legal provisions that the court is to apply to the case. These provisions of Thai laws mostly refer only to “things” or to “property,” not both. This often means that

Vietnam’s amended Law on Intellectual Property of 2022 (“Amended IP Law”) took effect on January 1, 2023, with the exception of a few provisions. However, subordinate legal documents (bylaws) providing necessary details and guidance on the new law still have not been issued, leaving some aspects of the law’s implementation in a state of limbo. This has caused a particular challenge for applications for establishing industrial property rights that were filed before January 1, 2023, but remain pending at the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam (“IP Office”). While waiting for the official bylaws to be promulgated, the IP Office has issued some internal protocols for handling applications in this interim period. Partial Grant of Protection Titles The Amended IP Law mentions, for the first time, the possibility of partial granting of protection titles for industrial property objects. Under the amended Article 118, the IP Office can issue a notice of its intention to grant partial protection to the allowable parts of a patent/design/trademark application. However, as an interim protocol, the intention to partially grant protection has been temporarily put on hold until further guidance is issued. Security Control on Patents For patent applications based on Vietnamese inventions, if there are any corresponding patent applications filed overseas, the IP Office will suspend the examination until the official new bylaws on security control are provided. Applications for Designs which Are Not Visible During Use The IP Office imposes a specific mechanism on design applications filed from August 1, 2020, until January 1, 2023, in which the designs are not visible during the exploitation of the utility of complex products. Accordingly, even if a notice of intention to grant was issued but there was no decision on granting by January 1, 2023, the IP Office will issue a new notice on the

From the perspective of a plaintiff (or a group of plaintiffs) considering initiating a class action in a Thai court, a primary benefit of proceeding as a class action is the ability to aggregate claims that would otherwise be too small or too costly to bring individually. Where one plaintiff might lack a claim large enough to make pursuing litigation a cost-effective option, the combined claims of many plaintiffs could surpass that threshold. Similarly, the prospect of representing a number of plaintiffs, along with the potential legal fees that could be awarded with a win, should serve as an incentive for counsel to represent a class of plaintiffs who, acting individually, would otherwise not be able to engage a lawyer interested in taking their case. For these same reasons, a defendant will most likely—although not necessarily always—oppose a plaintiff’s request that a case be allowed to proceed as a class action. From a defense perspective, preventing a case from proceeding as a class action could be a significant strategic goal, as it could mean that individual plaintiffs, as well as their counsel, would lack the financial incentive to pursue potentially costly litigation for their separate, relatively low-value claims. Potential defendants, therefore, may benefit considerably by understanding how a Thai court determines whether a case can proceed as a class action and, if it does, the potential options for a defendant that objects to this determination. The Court’s Initial Determination: Class Action or Ordinary Litigation? When a named plaintiff requests that a case proceed as a class action, that plaintiff must present the case to the court in accordance with the prerequisites stipulated by Thai law. The Civil Procedure Code (CPC) sets out the prerequisites for a case to proceed as a class action. Considerations include: whether the nature of