Thailand maintains offensive against intellectual property pirates

Business alliances representing major film and software companies in the United States have praised Thailand’s efforts against intellectual property pirates, following a series of Thailand’s attempts to reduce IPR infringements and the passing of laws to punish violators, while the government has joined forces with many organizations in cracking down on copycat goods during the past several years, an official at the Thai Ministry of Commerce said last week.

Thosapone Dansuputra, director-general of the Commerce Ministry’s Intellectual Property Department, told Thai media that groups including the International Intellectual Property Alliance and the Software Alliance made positive comments about Thailand’s efforts to protect intellectual property.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance represents many major Hollywood filmmakers, music companies, entertainment-software enterprises, and copyright owners for books. The Software Alliance, formerly known as the Business Software Alliance, was founded by Microsoft and includes many important software companies and developers.

Recent actions taken include a wave of raids by the Economic Crimes Suppression Division of the Royal Thai Police on businesses using pirated software. January alone saw 20 raids in Bangkok and several surrounding provinces. In Rayong, for instance, a South Korean manufacturing firm was caught with pirated Microsoft software on 64 computers.

In 2016, police raided 268 companies for using illegal software, a rise of about 10 percent over 2015, and seized illegal software worth roughly $15 million.

The most raided industries were construction with 98 raids, manufacturing with 86 raids, architecture/design with 36 raids, distribution companies with 20 raids, and engineering firms with 14 raids.

Thosapone said that Thailand will continue to maintain offensive against all kinds of intellectual property pirates.