In April 2026, the United States Trade Representative retained Thailand on the Special 301 Watch List, where the country has remained since 2017, following a decade on the Priority Watch List before that. The response of the Thai government has been a considered programme of planning: a Thailand–United States Intellectual Property Work Plan approved by the Cabinet in May 2025, and a national Intellectual Property Development Plan for 2026–2027 approved by the National Intellectual Property Policy Committee in August of that year, with the Ministry of Commerce reporting progress to the Cabinet this February. The plans are sound. The question, as so often in our legal system, is the distance between a plan and an instrument having the force of law.
The plans deserve to be called sound because they identify the correct problems. The Copyright Act B.E. 2537 (1994) predates the world it now governs. Its amendment would confer upon performers and producers the rights that accession to the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty requires, modernise the provisions on technological protection measures, and reform a royalty-collection system that presently serves neither creators nor users. A separate draft Collective Rights Management Act, circulated for public comment in mid-2026, would at last place the collecting societies themselves under proper regulation. Enforcement policy has been redirected upstream, toward manufacturers and major infringers rather than the market vendor, which is where it ought always to have been directed. The plan further commits to reducing the patent examination backlog, which practitioners know may approach a decade for an invention patent, a delay that operates in effect as a tax upon the very innovation the country professes to encourage.
Consider, however, where each commitment presently stands. The Copyright amendment received Cabinet approval in principle in May 2025 and completed its review by the Council of State, whereupon the House of Representatives was dissolved. The bill was not among those revived following the February 2026 election, and it must therefore travel the legislative road again. Thailand undertook under the RCEP agreement to accede to the WPPT within 2026; that deadline now approaches, and the enabling legislation is not yet before Parliament. Accession to the Hague Agreement for industrial designs was approved in principle by Parliament in 2022; no instrument of accession has been deposited in the four years since. This is the pattern that foreign rights holders would do well to understand: in our system, approval in principle is a statement of intention, not a change in the law, and the interval between the two can absorb an election, a drafting cycle, and several years.
What use, then, should a business make of such a plan? It should be read as an indication of where the ground will move, and positions should be taken accordingly, without assuming any particular date.
For rights holders in music, film and performance, alignment with the WPPT will in due course arrive, compelled by both treaty obligation and trade pressure. Agreements concluded now for exploitation in Thailand should anticipate performers' rights that do not yet exist in Thai law, so that the eventual amendment strengthens those agreements rather than unsettles them.
For patent applicants, the practical counsel is unchanged, and the Department of Intellectual Property's statistics for the first half of 2026 point in the same direction: petty patent filings grew by thirteen per cent while the examination backlog for invention patents persists. For an invention whose commercial life is shorter than the examination queue, the ten-year petty patent, examined for novelty alone, is frequently the more suitable instrument. Design applicants awaiting the Hague system would be well advised to file nationally rather than await a treaty that has now been four years in the coming.
For all rights holders, the shift in enforcement policy may prove the most consequential element. A government whose performance is measured against the Watch List has every incentive to produce cases against significant infringers. The rights holders positioned to benefit will be those whose recordals are in order, whose evidence is preserved, and whose Thai counsel stands ready.
I have spent a considerable part of my career within the committees where plans of this kind are written, and I do not doubt the sincerity of their authors. But sincerity does not amend statutes; Parliament does. Until Parliament acts, the Development Plan is best read as a navigator reads a weather forecast: not as the sky itself, but as fair warning of the quarter from which the wind will come. The businesses that trim their sails now will be the ones to profit by it.
Disclaimer: This publication is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The information contained herein should not be relied upon as a substitute for specific legal counsel. For advice tailored to your circumstances, please contact Dej-Udom & Associates directly.