1) The group of persons who may obtain patents in Thailand will be extended to nationals, residents and those having a legitimate ongoing business address in any country that is a member of the Paris Convention or the World Trade Organization. Previously the ability to obtain a patent in Thailand was based on a reciprocity requirement.

2) Priority rights will be available to all who are entitled to obtain a patent in Thailand instead of just the small group of applicants entitled to do so at present under various treaties. Additionally the one-year period from the first application for a patent for the invention anywhere in the world within which patent applications must be filed in Thailand will be extended to eighteen months.

3) The current exemption from a finding of patent infringement for those who have obtained patented items in good faith is replaced by one that results in an exemption if the alleged infringing article is one in respect of which the patentee permitted or gave consent to its original manufacture or sale. Such manufacture or sale may have occurred anywhere in the world so that Thailand has effectively adopted the principle of international exhaustion of patent rights.

4) Prior user rights are to be limited to those who act without knowledge of the patent and without "suitable grounds to know of the" patent.

5) A system of petty patents is to be introduced. To qualify for protection by way of a petty patent an innovation will need only to be new and have industrial applicability. Unlike inventions that qualify for patent protection, no inventive step will be required. The initial term of a petty patent will be six years from the date of filing the application with the possibility of two extensions of two years each. Interconversion between patent and petty patent applications will be permitted but dual protection by way of patent and petty patent for the same invention will not be permitted.

6) The law on compulsory licensing is modified so that the Director-General can no longer invite applications for compulsory licenses. Additionally, grants of compulsory licenses to permit the working of a later patented invention are to be confined to situations where the later patent is one for an invention of great importance to technological progress and is beneficial to the economy as compared with the invention of the patent under which a license is to be granted.