Doing Business, a Q&A-style guide published by Practical Law Company in association with Lex Mundi, presents an overview of key recent developments affecting doing business in 41 jurisdictions worldwide. The Thailand chapter, written by attorneys at Tilleke & Gibbins, provides an overview of the country’s legal system and the key laws applicable to foreign companies doing business in the Kingdom. In particular, the chapter examines the following main subjects:

Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology, also known as “additive manufacturing,” is the process by which a physical object is produced from a 3D digital model, often by being built up with many successive layers of material. In recent years, the technology has become much more accessible to businesses and individual consumers, and it will likely have a significant impact on several major industries, including healthcare, automotive, and aerospace, among others.

The content below was first published on TRACE Trends – A Compliance Conversation, a blog published by TRACE International. Tilleke & Gibbins is the TRACE Partner Law Firm for Thailand.

In our previous update, the Royal Government of the Kingdom of Cambodia issued several Prakas  (regulations) requiring all Cambodian companies that were established with the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) before January 4, 2016, to re-register using a new online portal for business registration and re-registration. The online portal uses modern technology and provides more transparent procedures.

Vietnam’s National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam (NOIP) launched its first Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) as a pilot program with the Japan Patent Office (JPO) on April 1, 2016.The program applies to Vietnamese patent applications (including Vietnamese national phase applications of PCT applications) which:

Last month, a U.S. court in California issued an order to Apple that was metaphorically equivalent to a magnitude 9 earthquake cutting through the Silicon Valley. The order shook the tech world to its core, requiring Apple to write code to bypass a security feature of its product to allow a brute force password attack by the FBI to unlock an iPhone used by one of the terrorists killed by police after the San Bernardino attack in December 2015. That order, and the subsequent filings by the U.S.

In Thailand, employers with ten or more employees must file a copy of their Work Rules (and subsequent revisions) in the Thai language to the Director-General of the Department of Labor Protection and Welfare within seven days from the date the Work Rules are announced. The traditional method to file these documents is to send them by post or in person to the Director-General.

This is an outline of the respective powers of directors with binding signatory power, the Board of Directors, the Managing Director(s), the Chairman of the Board and other officers, and the shareholders in private Thailand limited companies.Introduction