Thailand is a country where intellectual property has generated much controversy. In
the late 1980s, the debate about controversial changes to the Copyright Act to
strengthen the position of rights holders even led to a dissolution of parliament and
the calling of new elections19. The discussion subsequently shifted to patents and
pharmaceuticals during the 1990s. In view of the AIDS crisis in Thailand, the
government was much criticised for failing to use existing compulsory licensing
mechanisms for pharmaceuticals because it feared a negative impact on foreign
investment20. More recently, Thailand has made headlines by establishing the region’s
first specialised court for intellectual property and international trade law in 199621.
Interestingly, and as a significant diversion from the country’s civil law tradition, the
court has been allowed to draft its own rules of court rather than to effect changes
through an amendment of the civil and criminal procedural codes. Classical common
law remedies such as Anton Piller orders and interlocutory injunctions drafted along
the lines of the American Cyanamid decision of the House of Lords in the UK have
been added to the repertoire of the court. The court is not completely specialised on
intellectual property matters, because it has also been given responsibility for
international trade law to counter initial fears that it would not generate a sufficient
workload. Statistics show that this fear was unfounded. The workload of the court
almost doubled between 2000 and 2004, although the majority of the intellectual
property cases were criminal cases rather than civil suits.