Thailand's Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) held bilateral talks with the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) in Beijing on 21 September. DIP Director-General Oramon Sapthaweetham led the delegation and exchanged views with NCAC Director-General Wang Zhicheng on how the two countries' copyright protection systems should develop. According to the DIP's announcement, the talks focused on three subjects: copyright management of the use of public-domain musical works, the suppression of online copyright infringement, and the relationship between copyright and artificial intelligence. The two agencies also agreed to extend their cooperation so that it keeps pace with technological change and with the ways works are now exploited. The DIP frames the meeting as part of meeting the challenges of the digital age, protecting rights holders and creating opportunities to exploit creative works.
This is not a new written rule, but it is an official signal for reading where Thailand's digital copyright regulation goes next. The three subjects match three lines of work already under way in Thailand: managing public-domain musical works echoes the recent clean-up of music licensing and collection practices; online infringement governance continues the joint rapid-response model with platforms and internet service providers that the DIP announced last week; and putting the copyright-and-AI relationship on the agenda shows Thailand shaping its own position with reference to Chinese practice on AI training data, labelling of generated content and platform responsibility. J&C recommends that companies running music, film, gaming or AI content businesses in Thailand keep these three topics on a watch list: users of public-domain musical works should watch for any Thai registration or collective-management arrangement; online content businesses aimed at Thailand should prepare complaint and blocking evidence along the lines of last week's DIP-platform enforcement model; and anyone training AI or distributing AI-generated content should anticipate possible Thai licensing and labelling requirements by reference to current Chinese practice.
