Michael Ramirez, a counsel in Tilleke & Gibbins’ dispute resolution group in Bangkok, will provide the Thailand legal outlook at a Thailand Regional Forum meeting to be held at Sasin School of Management on June 9, 2022. The event will be a special relaunch meeting of the Thailand Regional Forum, an initiative established by Dataconsult some 35 years ago. After a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, the forum is restarting with Sasin School of Management as its new home. The Thailand Regional Forum at Sasin plans to hold regular meetings from July onward. The meeting will consist of forecasting panel presentations and roundtable discussions. In addition to Michael’s presentation of the legal outlook for Thailand, other speakers will offer insights into Thailand’s political, risk, economic, and human resources outlook in the coming year. Following the presentations, the speakers and attendees will participate in a roundtable discussions and Q&A to address any questions that came up during the session and to consider various potential scenarios. For more information on the Thailand Regional Forum, which offers memberships on a corporate basis, please see the Dataconsult website.

On April 26, Darani Vachanavuttivong, managing partner of the firm’s intellectual property department, led an ASEAN Intellectual Property Association (ASEAN IPA) webinar titled “IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future” to celebrate World IP Day 2022. Appearing in her capacity as president of the ASEAN IPA, Darani welcomed three young presenters to the virtual event. The three young innovators, who were were from Chulalongkorn University, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and New York University, gave presentations on the following topics, respectively: Intellectual Property Law and Thailand’s Higher Education USPTO: US and ASEAN Youth Initiatives Digitalization and Innovation in Today’s Legal Industry The session emphasized this year’s world IP day theme (“IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future”) and inspired upcoming leaders across the region to embrace innovation, technology, and IP as part of their future.

On April 7, Tilleke & Gibbins, in collaboration with the European Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Lao PDR and the South-East Asia IP SME Helpdesk, offered a webinar titled “Intellectual Property in Lao PDR.” In the webinar, Dino Santaniello, head of Tilleke & Gibbins’ office in Laos, gave an introduction to the Lao regulatory and legal framework for trademarks, and then focused on a few common areas of concern for international businesses looking to do business in Laos. These specific topics included: How to register and enforce trademarks in Laos; Parallel import issues; and Franchise and license agreements. The session helped increase awareness of the value of intellectual property and risk mitigation strategies. Attendees were also able to address their questions to Dino, who provided guidance based on his extensive experience with the regulatory regime for intellectual property in Laos.

Tiziana Sucharitkul, managing partner and director of Tilleke & Gibbins’ dispute resolution group, provided in-depth insights on diversity and inclusion and law firms for a recent article in Asia Business Law Journal (ABLJ) on diversity and inclusion in law firms across Asia. In the article, which was published on March 30, 2022, Tiziana offers insights gained in her years in senior leadership at Tilleke & Gibbins and as a longtime advocate for law firm diversity and inclusion initiatives. The article begins by contrasting the demand for greater diversity among Western law firms—especially by corporate counsel—with attitudes in Asia, where questions of expertise and service often take precedence when it comes to legal work. The writer then quickly shifts to investigating the reasons for this, as well as exploring the current state of diversity in the Asian legal industry today. This section of the article leads with Tiziana’s explanation that leadership of Asian law firms are in a very different context than the social tensions that catalyzed many diversity initiatives in the West. However, this does not necessarily mean that diverse representation has lagged in this part of the world. Rather, as Tiziana points out, “Southeast Asian countries have some of the highest proportions of women in senior business leadership in the world.” She also notes that markers such as gender diversity and respect for minority rights can vary widely across Asia. Elsewhere in the article, other senior law firm leaders express similar observations and provide details on the diversity challenges in their countries of focus. For example, an expert on diversity in the Indian legal profession notes that local diversity concerns must also consider caste discrimination, and a partner at a global firm in Singapore speaks about the challenges of developing diversity policies that fit each local context. Tiziana