While we’ve all seen how quickly life has changed during the pandemic, from a business and HR angle the possibility of intellectual property misappropriation and theft occasioned by work-from-home policies may not yet be clear to many. With many employees working outside their company’s normal IT security fence, their increased use of their own computers and devices, instead of those in their offices with standard or enhanced security mechanisms, has made it more challenging for employers to control access to key business information.

A leading apparel company based in Spain, Original Buff, S.A., designs and produces apparel for outdoor, active, urban, and everyday wear. Their flagship product is a multifunctional, seamless, tubular headgear item, first created in 1992, with the mark BUFF, which was registered in Spain in 1994, followed by registrations in over 110 countries worldwide in class 25 (clothing).

As the Thai government became increasingly aware of the exponential rise of online IP infringement, in 2017 the government amended the Computer Crime Act (CCA) to give IP owners the option of blocking websites containing IP-infringing content. In the years following this, however, no trademark owner relied on the website-blocking measures under the amended CCA, which are set out in section 20(3) of the law. This changed recently, when Tilleke & Gibbins assisted our clients in filing complaints under section 20(3) of the CCA against websites infringing trademarks online.