Are importers and distributors responsible for patent infringement related to the products they import and distribute? This seemingly simple question has still only been partially answered in Vietnam, when the Superior People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City rendered a judgment on 28 July 2020 sending a case back to the first-instance court for a retrial.

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.

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).