Expected to be promulgated in August 2021, Vietnam’s Decree on e-Identification and Authentication, currently in draft form, will be the first to provide a comprehensive legal basis for managing, providing and using e-identification and authentication services.

The legalization of kratom—a plant with potential medical applications that was previously listed as a prohibited narcotic—is part of a broader trend of modernizing reforms in Thailand’s narcotic laws.

The government of Vietnam issued Decree No. 55/2021/ND-CP (Decree 55) on May 24, 2021, to amend and supplement penalties for administrative violations against environmental protection regulations.

The new guidelines are intended to prevent the abuse of superior bargaining power, discrimination, and business obstruction when purchasers set credit terms with SMEs.

The latest updates to the Employment and Employee Benefits Global Guide, a Thomson Reuters Practical Law online publication that provides an overview of employment and employee benefits in jurisdictions worldwide, includes a revised chapter on employment regulations in Myanmar. The Myanmar chapter was written by members of Tilleke & Gibbins’ Yangon office, including Yuwadee Thean-ngarm, director, Nwe Oo, attorney-at-law, and Sher Hann Chua, consultant. The chapter covers a wide range of key employment topics, including employment status, background checks, regulation of the employment relationship, minimum wage, working hours and holidays, illness and injury of employees, discrimination and harassment, termination of employment, resolution of employer-employee disputes, redundancy/layoffs, employee representation and consultation, business transfer and insolvency, employee relocation, health and safety obligations, taxation of employment income, intellectual property issues, and more. Practical Law, produced by Thomson Reuters, is the world’s leading legal resource for business lawyers, publishing a huge range of guides for hundreds of jurisdictions and practice areas. The Employment and Employee Benefits Global Guide covers 42 jurisdiction around the world, with Tilleke & Gibbins also providing the Vietnam chapter of the guide. To view the latest version of the Myanmar chapter, please visit the Practical Law website.

New regulations prohibit trade in meme tokens, fan tokens, non-fungible tokens, and native utility tokens in Thailand, and requires digital asset exchanges to revise their listing rules and conditions by July 10, 2021.

The new guidelines provide much sought-after clarity on several key points under the Law on Investment Promotion 2016, providing investors in Laos with a clearer framework, rooted in international standards, for securing investment promotion benefits.

Seven years after Indonesia enacted its new copyright law (Law No. 28 of 2014), the government has finally published an implementing regulation relating to the management of royalties for songs or music under copyright. The new guidelines are contained in Government Regulation No. 56 of 2021 on Song and/or Music Copyrights Royalties Management, which was welcomed by creators, rights holders, and other related parties when it was issued on March 31. The regulation lays out 13 commercial public venues and uses that are subject to royalty payments for playing songs or music under copyright: Seminars and commercial conferences; Restaurants, cafés, pubs, bars, bistros, night clubs, and discotheques; Music concerts; Airplanes, buses, trains, and ships; Exhibitions and bazaars; Cinemas; Ringtones; Banks and offices; Stores; Recreation centers; TV stations; Radio stations; Hotels, hotel rooms, and hotel facilities; and Karaoke services. Collection and distribution of royalties from commercial users of songs or music is conducted by the National Collective Management Agency (Lembaga Manajemen Kolektif Nasional, or LMKN) on behalf of creators and rights holders. The organization consists of two sections—LMKN Creators and LMKN Related Rights Holders—each of which is led by an independent commissioner with duties and organizational structure regulated by further ministerial regulation. The new regulation mandates the establishment of two new repositories, within two years, that will have important implications for the management of royalties for musical works. One of these—the government’s Song and Music Data Center—will contain information on all the songs and music registered with Indonesia’s Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP) and will be accessible to anyone seeking information related to commercial use of a registered musical work (e.g., LMKN, creators and rights holders, commercial users, etc.). The second repository is the Song and Music Information System, which is an internal system to be developed and administered by LMKN itself to aid in the distribution of royalties based on the commercial use of protected