When deciding how much to invest in their intellectual property rights, product manufacturers often ask, “What is a patent worth?” This is a reasonable question, given the costs required to obtain patent protection. But manufacturers need to understand that unless a product with high value and risk of being imitated is patent-protected, the product owner could lose potential profits by not possessing exclusive rights to the product.

On January 12, 2017, the Ho Chi Minh City Court rendered a ruling in favor of a major Silicon Valley high-tech company, ending a lengthy dispute between the company and a Vietnamese entity over the latter’s unauthorized use and registration of a company name and a domain name which incorporated the U.S. company’s registered trademark. To the delight of the U.S. company, the court resolved the dispute in an expedient 55 days. The brand owner’s course of action provided a useful test of new regulations on domain name and company name disputes.

Tilleke & Gibbins’ Laos office is pleased to publish a new guide, Intellectual Property in Laos: Registration, Protection, Commercialization, for business operators who are new to the country. The publication provides a useful introduction to IP registration, commercialization, and management in Laos, and covers the following important topics:

The latest edition of Practical Law Company’s Agricultural Law Global Guide  was recently published, with the Vietnam chapter written by lawyers from Tilleke & Gibbins. The guide’s Q&A format provides a high-level overview of agricultural law in 24 different countries, including the following topics:

The Thailand chapter of Practical Law Company’s recently published Agricultural Law Global Guide  was written by lawyers from Tilleke & Gibbins. The guide provides a comparative overview of agricultural law in 24 jurisdictions across six continents, and covers the following topics in an easy-to-follow Q&A format:

Vietnam’s IP enforcement system has seen great improvements over the last several years. In particular, the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has handled many complex disputes in the pharmaceutical sector related to patent infringement, unfair competition, and trademark infringement.

Vietnam, like many other countries in the world, has an open policy on the registration and use of its country code top-level domain name, “.vn”. Accordingly, any individual or organization, whether domestic or foreign, whether present in Vietnam or not, has the right to register and subsequently use domain names ending in “.vn”. With such an open policy, disputes over domain names will naturally arise, especially when unrelated applicants register names similar to, or containing, the protected marks and brands of IP rights holders.

The long-term growth forecast for Thailand’s insurance industry is quite positive, with increasing income, an ageing population, low market penetration rates, increased market liberalization in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), and supportive regulatory framework all expected to contribute to double-digit growth for the industry over the next few years.