Kien Trung Trinh, partner and head of Tilleke & Gibbins’ labor and employment practice in Vietnam, wrote the chapter on Vietnam for the latest edition of Practical Law’s Employment and Employee Benefits Global Guide. The 2019 edition of the popular handbook provides a comparative overview of labor law in 31 jurisdictions spanning the globe, from Australia to Mexico. Tilleke & Gibbins also contributed the Myanmar chapter of the guide.

Nandana Indananda and Manaswee Wongsuryrat, a partner and attorney-at-law respectively in Tilleke & Gibbins’ intellectual property group, have contributed a comprehensive guide to Thailand’s legal profession to the Taipei Bar Law Journal —the academic publication of the Taipei Bar Association.

On June 12, 2019, Order No. 6/2562 of Thailand’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) entered into force.

Thailand’s Ministry of Commerce has released additional details on the types of service business activities that are exempt from licensing requirements for foreign businesses. The exempted service businesses (broadly relating to services that companies in the same group provide to one another) are defined in Ministerial Regulation No. 4 Re: Determination of Service Businesses which Are Not Required to Apply for Permission for a Foreign Business License B.E. 2562 (2019), which was published in the Government Gazette on June 25, 2019.

Following major developments in Cambodian labor law in 2018 and early 2019, in the past six months Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training (MLVT) has continued to make substantial clarifications and revisions to employment law in Cambodia that employers should be aware of. The changes fall into three categories:1.  Foreign Workers and Employment Contracts

On June 30, 2019, in Hanoi, representatives from the European Union and Vietnam officially signed the historic EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), a comprehensive and mutually beneficial agreement in which thoughtful consideration was given to the development gap between the two parties. The ambitious agreement includes a number of provisions on intellectual property, which we discuss below.Patent

As of June 27, 2019, foreign traders in Laos who have no registered business in the country will need a Trading Rights Certificate from the Department of Import and Export, Ministry of Industry and Commerce, in order to import or export goods. This development comes with Decision on Trading Rights of Foreign Traders No. 0623/MOIC, which was published in the official electronic gazette on June 12, 2019, and will take effect 15 days after publication.

On June 14, 2019, the National Assembly of Vietnam ratified a law amending and supplementing the Law on Insurance Business and the Law Intellectual Property (IP Law), with the primary purpose being to bring the existing laws in line with the terms of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which came into effect in Vietnam on January 14, 2019. The key changes in the amended IP Law are presented below.PatentsGrace period applicable to utility patents