When a U.S. cosmetics startup discovered that a trademark application for its brand name had been filed in Vietnam by a likely trademark squatter, they opted to use a “straw man” – another company with no visible connection to the startup – to directly negotiate with the squatter.

Under current law, the term of protection for photographic works is 50 years from the work’s creation or first publication. The draft amendment of the Copyright Act extends this to be the lifetime of the author plus an additional 50 years. This change would put Thailand’s protection for photographic works in line with the WIPO Copyright Treaty, of which Thailand is getting ready to be a member. Online infringement: safe harbours and takedowns While the current Copyright Act provides injunctive relief against online infringement for copyright owners, together with an exemption from infringement liability for ISPs, the mechanism for doing so has proved ineffective. The new draft therefore replaces this mechanism with safe harbour provisions that exempt ISPs from liability for copyright infringement committed by users, as long as the ISPs comply properly – including by implementing the notice-and-takedown system. The draft provides a detailed definition of ‘service providers’ and divides ISPs into intermediary ISPs, caching ISPs, hosting ISPs, and search engine ISPs. The draft’s definition of ‘users’ of ISPs includes anyone who uses an ISP’s service (paying or otherwise). In order to be exempted from liability for copyright infringement for their provided services, an ISP must have explicitly announced (and complied with) a policy to terminate services to repeated infringers. ISPs must also adopt the notice-and-takedown system – a new addition by the draft. Under this system, which can be compared to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US, copyright owners can send a notice of infringement (backed by evidence) to caching, hosting or search engine ISPs, informing them of any allegedly infringing data. An ISP that has been notified is required to immediately take down the allegedly infringing data, its references, and access points from their system – or block access. The ISP must then notify the user

Moral rights are non-transferable under Vietnam’s laws on copyright, but the issue of whether they can be waived is unsettled. The amended Intellectual Property Law, now in draft form, may bring clarity to this issue.

With the latest COVID-19 outbreak in Thailand becoming more severe and widespread, travel restrictions and social distancing measures may prevent applicants for patents, petty patents, and design patents from submitting documents or amendments by the required deadline. In order to ease the burden on applicants, the Director-General of the Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) has issued a notification, effective on April 16, 2021, extending the deadline for submission of documents and amendments in response to office actions with the DIP. According to the notification, any office action deadline which was due to fall from April 16 to May 31, 2021 will now automatically be postponed to May 31, 2021. Applicants may submit their responses to office actions from June 1 – June 30, 2021. The extended deadlines apply to the following procedures: Amendments in response to office actions; Submission of documents per an office action or examiner’s instructions; and, Requests for extensions of time for amendments or document submission in response to office actions. Applicants who are able to do so may still choose to submit any documentation, amendments, and requests for extensions within the original deadline stipulated in an office action.