Introducing one of WSR’s founding partners, Sukhprem Sachdecha, the S in WSR. Sukhprem is coming up on 20 years practicing as a licensed Thai attorney, barrister and patent attorney. He has over two dozen Supreme Court wins under his belt, including two landmark cases in Thailand. He was the first attorney in Thailand to successfully register a shape mark, the case on behalf of a world-renowned French fashion house is now used as the precedent by many firms to register their own clients shape marks. He has handled hundreds of cases of trademark and patent enforcement over the years. He was the only private practitioner to sit on the Patent Drafting Committee to revise Thailand’s patent law back in 2016.

But how does this connect him with cannabis? Sukhprem’s experience practicing law in the cannabis field in Thailand goes back 18 years, almost 2 decades before today’s current crop of cannabis experts even thought to think of cannabis and Thailand in the same sentence. Since 2005, Sukhprem was involved in prosecuting several cannabis patents on behalf of major pharmaceutical companies. His interest in cannabis law further ignited in December 2018 when the Thai Legislative Assembly amended the Narcotics Act that partially legalized medical cannabis, then prior to the amended Narcotics Act coming into force, on 28 January 2019, the National Council for Peace and Order issued Order No. 1/2562 allowing the Department of Intellectual Property the authority to suspend cannabis-related patent applications. Sukhprem actively assisted his clients to try and overcome the patent hurdles and also helped them link up with local universities to conduct cannabis related research. Since then, he has been advising many high-net-worth Thai and foreign individuals and companies, including many publicly traded companies both locally and overseas in the years leading up the deregulation as one of the very few attorneys working in the space pre-delisting as a narcotic. His expertise is so well known he was invited to sit on the Cannabis Drafting Committee to help shape and draft the new legislation but declined due to his punishing work schedule.

Sukhprem is a dual major, law and computer science, and holds Masters degrees from both Thammasat University, Thailand’s premier law school, my own alma mater, and the prestigious and world renowned New York University (NYU). He is an associate professor at Thailand’s top law school, Thammasat and is a routine guest lecturer at many government organizations both in Thailand and abroad. He has also achieved the prestigious Legal500 Recommended Attorney designation three times.

At WSR we don’t just have street cred, we have arguably the foremost Thai lawyer in the country in the field of cannabis.

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