Service guide
How copyright in Thailand works: protection without registration under the Copyright Act, the life plus 50 year term, and what a copyright firm handles.
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Copyright in Thailand arises automatically when a qualifying work is created. The Copyright Act B.E. 2537 protects literary, dramatic, artistic, musical, audiovisual, cinematographic, sound recording, and broadcast works in whatever form they are expressed, and it vests ownership in the author without any registration requirement. Thailand has also been a Berne Convention member since July 17, 1931, so works by nationals of other member countries are protected here on the same automatic basis.
That is the part most people get right. The part that generates the legal work is everything around it: proving you are the author when someone copies the work, untangling who owns what when work was created for hire or by contractors, and licensing the work so others can use it on defined terms.
Copyright protects the expression of a work, not a brand name and not an invention. Those belong to trademark and patent protection, and an intellectual property lawyer can map where each piece of a business's creative output actually sits.
Note: Voluntary recordal is evidence, not a grant of rights
The Department of Intellectual Property accepts voluntary copyright recordals. Filing one does not create the copyright, which already exists, but firms often file it anyway because a dated official record is useful evidence of authorship and ownership when a dispute surfaces years later. For commissioned and employee-created works, the contract deciding who owns the copyright matters more than any filing.
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Bangkok-based law firm delivering strategic, business-focused legal advice with deep local expertise and a practical, solutions-oriented approach.
฿3,500–15,000 / hour
Top Tier Intellectual Property Law firm specialized in trademark, patent and copyright protection with high expertise in litigation and enforcement.
฿1,500–10,000 / hour
International Legal and Cross-Border Business Advisory in Thailand and Asia
The general term under the Copyright Act is the life of the author plus fifty years after death. Works owned by companies, and anonymous or pseudonymous works, are protected for fifty years from creation or from first publication. Those are long horizons, which is why ownership paperwork written today decides disputes decades away.
When a work is copied, the Act has real teeth: commercial-scale infringement carries imprisonment from three months to two years or fines from 50,000 to 400,000 baht, or both, and copyright cases go to the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court. In practice a firm's enforcement work starts well before court, with evidence preservation, takedown demands, and negotiation, and proceeds to litigation when that fails.
The other half of copyright practice is transactional: licensing a work, assigning it, and drafting the ownership clauses in employment and contractor agreements so the business owns what it paid to create. A lawyer can review those agreements before the work is created, which is when the fix is cheap.
This page is general information, not legal advice. Rules and procedures change; for a specific work or dispute, speak with a qualified professional.
Also listed
Every one of these is verified on Justenda and can take on copyright protection work in Thailand.
Bangkok-based law firm delivering strategic, business-focused legal advice with deep local expertise and a practical, solutions-oriented approach.
฿3,500–15,000 / hour
Top Tier Intellectual Property Law firm specialized in trademark, patent and copyright protection with high expertise in litigation and enforcement.
฿1,500–10,000 / hour
International Legal and Cross-Border Business Advisory in Thailand and Asia
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Bangkok-based law firm delivering strategic, business-focused legal advice with deep local expertise and a practical, solutions-oriented approach.
฿3,500–15,000 / hour
Top Tier Intellectual Property Law firm specialized in trademark, patent and copyright protection with high expertise in litigation and enforcement.
฿1,500–10,000 / hour
International Legal and Cross-Border Business Advisory in Thailand and Asia
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