The Commerce Ministry has teamed up with advertising associations and intellectual property (IP) rights owners to fight IP infringement in online ads, aiming to enhance investor confidence and bolster the country's soft power.
According to Deputy Commerce Minister Sinit Lertkrai, the Intellectual Property Department yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with 20 rights owners and three ad associations in an effort to tackle piracy in online advertising and protect IP rights.
The three associations are the Advertising Association of Thailand, the Digital Advertising Association (Thailand) and the Media Agency Association of Thailand.
The cooperation aims to increase the confidence of both Thai and foreign investor communities and support the government's soft power policy, said Mr Sinit.
"The Commerce Ministry prioritised driving the country's growth by adopting intellectual property as a tool to add value to products and services, increasing the competitiveness of Thai entrepreneurs. Another goal was preventing and suppressing IP rights infringement to enhance the confidence of Thailand's trading partners and to create a favourable trade and investment atmosphere, especially in the digital content, advertising and e-commerce sectors, which have been continuously growing," he said.
According to Mr Sinit, important measures under the cooperation include stopping ads for products that infringe IP rights, withdrawing ads from websites or apps that infringe IP rights to deprive owners of revenue flows, and avoiding the production or distribution of advertising content that infringes IP rights.
He said Thailand is the first country in Asia-Pacific to sign this kind of MoU, which should upgrade the Thai ad industry to be "IP friendly" and enhance the confidence of foreign investors in the nation's digital content sector.
This will contribute to the digital economy growing steadily and sustainably, said Mr Sinit.
Rati Phanthawee, president of the Advertising Association of Thailand, said the association has a code of conduct in place to ensure it advertises only legitimate products, while the group pledges to become stricter to prevent and suppress online IP infringement in the industry.
According to Mr Rati, the market value of digital advertising is expected to reach 30 billion baht this year, up by 11% from the year before.