Sentencing Disparity and its Potential Impact on Criminal Cases of Copyright and Trademark Infringement in Thailand: Need for New Provisions and New Approach on Sentencing Guidelines

This article considers the problem of sentencing disparity in Thailand which could have potential impact on criminal cases of copyright and trademark infringement. At present, the Thai Courts rely on sentencing guidelines to prevent sentencing disparity, but different Courts in different parts of Thailand have formulated and used different sentencing guidelines, so the guidelines produced by different Courts have different standard of sentencing. This could result in a wide disparity in the sentences that the Courts impose on the infringers who commit the same offence, so this article proposes that the relevant provisions and the uniform national sentencing guideline like that of the US approach should be developed and introduced into the Thai legal system, so that the judges overseeing the criminal cases in the Intellectual Property and International Trade Courts, the Court of Appeal for Specialized Cases and the Supreme Court of Thailand could rely on such provisions and uniform national sentencing guidelines to prevent sentencing disparity.