As of 22 June 2020, Thailand has received 20,368 Madrid applications and, if considering only the years 2018 and 2019, almost 60% of foreign marks filed in Thailand utilised the Madrid System. With the system now in its third year, this update reflects on observations of the Madrid System and identifies the practical points for brand owners to consider when deciding which of the two channels—the Madrid System or the direct national route in Thailand—is the most efficient.

Almost a year and a half after Myanmar enacted the Trademark Law 2019 on January 30, 2019, the same question still lingers in the minds of many brand owners and attorneys: “When will the Trademark Law come into force?”Despite rumors and speculation, the government has yet to fix a date for the law’s implementation.Ministry Mandate

Traditional IP enforcement measures are sometimes ill fit to deal with the rapidly evolving nature of internet resources in the digital era. Thailand has been responding to the exponential rise of online IP infringement on a rolling basis—most recently in 2017 when it amended the Computer Crime Act (CCA) to give IP owners the option of blocking websites that post IP-infringing content. This is set out in section 20(3) of the law.

While Vietnam, like the rest of the world, has been focusing on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vietnamese courts have quietly recorded new milestones in the judgment of patent cases. One of those milestones came on March 12, 2020, in a decision on appeal settlement issued by the Superior People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City against a provincial court’s decision on suspension of a patent case.Starting from a Simple Case

Practical Law has published an updated online version of Agricultural Law in Thailand, a Q&A-style guide that provides detailed overviews of the law affecting agribusiness in the country. The Thailand overview is one of twenty such guides to jurisdictions worldwide, covering key practical issues related to the legal environment for agricultural operations.The Thailand section, written by lawyers at Tilleke & Gibbins, delves into the following main issues:

While Vietnam’s economy has grown quiet during the first half of 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the country’s legal framework for intellectual property enforcement seems to be exploding with the entry of new legal instruments. The EVFTA (EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement), coming on the heels of the CPTPP, will come into force in Vietnam on August 1, 2020, bringing about some major changes to the current IPE framework. We discuss a few of these changes below.Preliminary Injunctions

On June 11, the Ministry of Health (MOH) released a notice on an updated pricing policy for COVID-19 tests, quarantine, and treatment services for foreign travelers arriving in Cambodia. This served to update and further detail an MOH announcement made on June 8 requiring that all foreign travelers entering Cambodia pay a deposit of USD 3,000 to designated commercial banks upon arrival at airports. This requirement was implemented on Monday, June 15, and is meant to ensure that all foreign travelers are able to pay for any required COVID-19 tests and other healthcare.

On June 12, 2020, the Myanmar government issued a Union Taxation Law Ordinance to provide tax relief to the crisis-hit private sector as part of the wider “Overcoming as One: COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan.”The new measures will be in effect for the 2020-2021 tax year, alongside the Income Tax Law and the Union Taxation Law 2019.There are four main tax exemptions to be aware of: