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:

As previously reported, the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam launched a patent prosecution highway (PPH) pilot program last year with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), following a very successful and ongoing pilot program with the Japanese Patent Office (JPO). The two-year Korea program began on June 1, 2019, and will end on May 31, 2021. The number of PPH requests accepted per year is limited to 100 from each office.

The Royal Thai Police has issued a notification which relaxes the requirement for property owners or hotel managers in Thailand to notify an immigration office every time a foreign national stays in their property. Titled “The Royal Thai Police Notification on Residence of Heads of Household, House Owners, Landlords, or Managers of Hotels, Who Accommodate Foreign Nationals on a Temporary Basis,” the notification was published in the Government Gazette on June 16, 2020, and will take effect on June 30, 2020.

Two new notifications pertaining to the Land and Building Tax Act B.E. 2562 (2019) were published in the Government Gazette on May 29, 2020, detailing the criteria for classifying property utilization as residential or agricultural in order to determine the tax rates for these property types.Residential Property

On May 26, 2020, Thai Airways International PCL submitted a petition for business rehabilitation, including a list of creditors, to the Central Bankruptcy Court. The court accepted the petition for consideration on the following day, and has scheduled a hearing for 9:00 a.m. on August 17, 2020, to determine whether Thai Airways should enter business rehabilitation. The court is now in the process of sending a copy of Thai Airways’ petition to the creditors whose names appear in the creditor list.

The Royal Decree on Land and Building Tax Reduction B.E. 2563 was published in Thailand’s Government Gazette on June 10, 2020, and took effect the next day. The decree, intended to provide additional relief to the Thai economy as it begins to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, applies a 90% reduction to land and building tax payments for 2020 which are due to be paid by August 31, 2020 (previously extended from April 30, 2020). Owners of land or buildings are therefore only required to pay 10% of the land and building tax owed for 2020.