Q1192. How to translate international intellectual property infringement lawsuits?

Answered by the NYC Visa & Translation certified translation team

International IP infringement lawsuits involving Thailand generate translation in both directions: Thai court proceedings with foreign parties, and foreign proceedings involving Thai parties or Thai evidence. The Thai court track: IP cases in Thailand go to the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court — the proceedings are in Thai, and the foreign party's evidence (the foreign registrations, the foreign sales and marketing evidence, the foreign judgments) is legalised, translated into Thai, and certified for the filing; the Thai court's documents (the complaint, the judgment) are translated into English for the foreign party. The foreign court track: Thai evidence for foreign proceedings (the Thai registrations, the Thai market evidence, the Thai manufacturing documents) follows the foreign forum's evidence rules — certified translations per the forum's requirements. Rules that matter: the claims of the asserted IP right (the patent claims, the trademark specifications) are the case's definition — translated with the settled IP translation discipline (patent claims word-for-word, trademarks untranslated as marks); the infringement comparison (the accused product's technical analysis) is expert-evidence text; and the damages evidence (the sales data, the licensing comparables) is financial text. Points that matter: the evidence preservation (the infringing goods, the capture of the infringing use) precedes the filing — the translation follows the preserved evidence; the parallel proceedings in multiple jurisdictions require consistent terminology across the jurisdictions' translations; and the judgment's enforcement across borders has its own document requirements. Coordinate with IP litigation counsel in each jurisdiction on the evidence and translation requirements.